Global warming and its effect are a concern worldwide.\u00a0 Whether you choose to believe it is caused by greenhouse gasses, or is simply a part of some 10,000 year weather cycle, or choose to ignore it altogether, the effects are the same and the proof is there.\u00a0 Yeah, polar ice caps melting and oceans rising is bad stuff.\u00a0 But the problem isn\u2019t right now, it is moving forward.\u00a0 If the warming continues, the effects are serious.\u00a0 But we aren\u2019t scientists and can\u2019t speak to the array of problems that will from temperatures continuing to edge up unabated.\u00a0 We can relate it to wine, though.<\/p>\n
If you go back in time, the greatest wine sites established themselves by virtue of quality.\u00a0 But quality, while accepting terroir is a significant aspect of the process, doesn\u2019t happen if the grapes don\u2019t get ripe.\u00a0 Incumbent in a site\u2019s success is the ability to ripen grapes properly on a consistent basis.\u00a0 The Piemontese, a generally practical people, figured out that the best sites for growing top grapes would be where the snow melted first.\u00a0 We suspect the monks used similar wisdom way-back-when to figure out the whole Burgundy scheme.\u00a0 The problem with global warming is that the successful sites, the ones with the greatest exposure, will get too much<\/em> exposure.\u00a0 They will be too <\/em>warm.<\/p>\n But thus far that hasn\u2019t been a serious issue.\u00a0 How many times has a vintage like 2003 in Europe, with the extreme blazing temperatures, come along?\u00a0 The rest of the time, the weather has been pretty friendly and we have experienced consistent strings of quality vintages in many important regions.\u00a0 Sure there are inopportune rain storms and occasions where the grapes had a little difficulty getting fully ripe.\u00a0 But the batting average has gone way up over the last 20 years.<\/p>\n Red Bordeaux perhaps provides the handiest example.\u00a0 Let\u2019s go back to the 20 year span from 1961 to 1981. During the period 1960, 1963, 1965, 1968, 1969, 1972, 1974, and 1977 were complete stinkers.\u00a0 Beyond that 1964 was a half vintage (Right Bank, yes, Left Bank not so much), 1967 was nothing to write home about, and 1980 yielded a few forgettable early drinkers that were saved by emerging technology to an extent.\u00a0 In other words, the sweeping generality was that more than half the vintages ranged from \u2018not-very-good\u2019 to \u2018downright crummy\u2019.<\/p>\n It got a little better over the next two decades, but there were still some serious misses (1984, 1987, 1991, 1992 and 1997) and a couple more (1993, 1994) in the \u2018meh\u2019 column.\u00a0 Since 2000, how many truly bad vintages have there been?\u00a0 Maybe two (2013 and 2007 though the Bordelais might argue 2013 is \u2018useful\u2019 and we\u2019d add that the problem with 2007 was the prices more than the wines themselves)?\u00a0 During that same period there have been 5-7 \u2018vintages of the century\u2019 (depending on how tough you want to be) and 4-5 others that would have caused dancing in the streets back in the \u2018dark times\u2019 of the 60s-70s.<\/p>\n Technology has had a hand in all of it, for sure.\u00a0 But the point is that there hasn\u2019t been as much need for the \u2018magic\u2019.\u00a0 It has been a pretty good run thanks in part to global warming.\u00a0 The batting average has been quite good in a number of prestige regions for a period of time.\u00a0 So, tongue-in-cheek, we say \u2018yeah\u2019 to global warming.\u00a0 It has been \u201cberry, berry good\u201d to the wine world thus far.\u00a0 Ice<\/em> has been a much more significant issue.\u00a0 Frost and hail have had much more significant impact than heat in some key places.<\/p>\n There has been a lot of talk about frost this year in particular as one of the occurrences devastated vineyards in Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, Northern Italy, and Spain.\u00a0 The Loire has been a particular \u2018whipping boy\u2019 of the inclement weather turns.\u00a0 There have been ice issues (frost, hail) seemingly on a regular basis.\u00a0 The Loire claimed 70% crop losses in 2016, and took a pretty good beating this again year.\u00a0 To make a point, here\u2019s a quote from Wine Spectator attributed to said Guillaume Lapaque, director of the Indre-et-Loire and Sarthe wine federation, which represents 600 vintners, “Montlouis has lost three of its last five crops”.<\/p>\n The effect of frost and hail are devastating not only for the short-term but possibly beyond.\u00a0 When a frost comes, it freezes whatever has grown on the vines, be that new buds in early April or established flower\/fruit growth in June or July.\u00a0 It disrupts the ripening cycle, sets back the plant, and, if it is severe enough, will even kill the vine.\u00a0 The afflicted areas certainly will not recover for this harvest and possibly not the next.<\/p>\n The effect of hail is different, but no less devastating.\u00a0 Essentially hail hitting a vine can knock off all the growth and even shred the leaves and canes in severe cases.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s like getting pummeled by thousands of little rocks, which isn\u2019t a positive at any time during the growing cycle. \u00a0It damagges by virtue of knocking off the flowers or nascent fruit in the early stages of the plant cycle or damaging the fruit later on which, if it doesn\u2019t destroy it outright, will open the path to all kinds of diseases.<\/p>\n A hailstorm, in August mind you, decimated 50,000 hectares in Burgundy and Bordeaux in 2013.\u00a0 Guys in the Languedoc were cruising along just fine until a freak hailstorm wiped out 2500 acres in about a half hour.\u00a0 Chablis got hit hard last year.\u00a0 There are countless more stories, but the point is heat so far has not been the enemy.\u00a0 Overall it seems vintages have improved some or at least become more consistent.\u00a0 It\u2019s the cold snaps that cause the serious problems and it seems we hear more reports of such things over the last few years. \u00a0This year in Europe has been something of a freak show for all kinds of \u2018cold\u2019 blights.<\/p>\n It is possible there is a connection to global warming and altered weather patterns, but we certainly don\u2019t know enough to make that point if we wanted to.\u00a0 The thing is that, unless you read the wine magazines pretty religiously, you wouldn\u2019t necessarily know any of this was going on.\u00a0 The vintage charts don\u2019t tell you this.\u00a0 In fact, an area that was hit hard early on in the harvest cycle can still<\/em> produce a high quality crop and the vintage chart may look rosy because what little wine was made was quite good because of the Nature induced reduction of yields. \u00a0But there can be a lot<\/em>\u00a0less wine. Significant crop loss can leave the grower with devastating financial shortfalls. \u00a0Also, it is more likely to hit the smaller, artisan type producers we like to work with than some large corporate wine concern with economies of scale.<\/p>\n Global warming<\/em> hasn\u2019t destroyed grape-growers livelihoods that we know of as yet.\u00a0 In fact the consistency of vintages over the last couple of decades might suggest that, thus far, it has been a plus for growers.\u00a0 But there are some vintners in serious financial straits thanks to these little icy \u2018surprises\u2019 that seem to be happening with a bit more regularity.\u00a0 It is hard not to feel for people whose anticipated income was ripped away without warning, and losing big chunks of quality juice does cause a ripple in the industry supply chain and can affect prices in an unwelcome way.<\/p>\n Yeah, global warming is a problem for a lot of reasons, particularly moving forward (though we did read about a company claiming to have the technology to mitigate greenhouse gasses the other day).\u00a0 But as far as wine goes, we are presently much more concerned about the viticultural and economic effects of the \u2018ice\u2019 than the \u2018fire\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Global warming and its effect are a concern worldwide.\u00a0 Whether you choose to believe it is caused by greenhouse gasses, or is simply a part of some 10,000 year weather cycle, or choose to ignore it altogether, the effects are the same and the proof is there.\u00a0 Yeah, polar ice caps melting and oceans rising … Continue reading “FIRE AND ICE”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[39],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2182"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2182"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2208,"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2182\/revisions\/2208"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}