Wine and Climate Change: Winemaking in a New World

Climate change is changing the way winemakers make wine. Once temperate grape-growing regions are growing hotter, challenging winemakers to produce high quality wines in unfamiliar ways. Many of the negative effects of climate change on the wine world are already apparent: European vineyards in the heart of traditional winemaking areas, for example, are suffering lower yields due to increasing temperatures. But new opportunities are also presenting themselves: areas in Europe and the Americas that could not successfully produce vitis vinifera grapes are becoming important players in the new world of wine. This book will explore climate change in a wine producing context, discussing why climate is important to grape growing and how climatic changes can affect grapes and wine. It will cover each major wine region in the world, analyzing the likely trends and their responses. And it will cover the ways wine producers are coping with this very quickly changing landscape. All this is central to the world of wine and centrally important to those who enjoy wine’s complexity and variety.