Studies of scholars are merciless. Climate change is seriously damaging the world of wine. To pursue cooler climates, we will be forced to abandon many areas currently cultivated. To move further north and at altitudes above eight hundred meters.
To hear who loves summer, the heat is nice even in October. Even when – three or four days from the feast of San Martino, the date when “every must becomes wine” – Milan and Northern Italy are overwhelmed by days where the thermometer is close to 30 degrees.
The autumn 2018 started really bad, this year, with anomalous temperatures from full August. A situation that can only appeal to those who look very little beyond his nose and would go to the beach at Christmas. Go to Kenya if you like it so hot!
The wine enthusiasts must, on the other hand, be reasonably concerned by the situation that is affecting our planet since the very hot summer of 2003, with record temperatures every year, too hot summers and too mild winters. The Earth has a fever and the cause is the man with its pollution no longer sustainable: if you do not reverse the trend, the situation for our favorite drink will be terrible.
A series of studies reported by La Stampa, newspaper from Turin, reveals that the future of wine will be that of strongly aromatic wines, dishes and spirits.
The heat of the summers, unbalanced by equally cold winters, is creating too sweet musts that return excessively “burning” wines. A wine that is too alcoholic covers the nuances and the varietal aromas will be increasingly difficult to identify.
The 2017 harvest was terrible all over the world, with quantities reduced to the minimum terms and high quality but at the price of an excessive alcohol content. That of 2018 was terrible, because the rains of August have damaged many vineyards and the large humidity with tropical storms has created huge problems for the producers.
A situation to be solved soon
If we do not move soon against the issue of climate change, our favourite drink will look more like a hard liquor. Italy, always a land blessed with an extraordinary variety of grapes, will lose its primacy, and our species of grapes will be explanted and transported more and more to the north.
Among the species that will be most affected there is the Pinot Noir, much more sensitive than other grapes to climate change. We will risk finding ourselves in its place of the Xinomavro or Monastrell plantations. And even the great French maisons will have to make war with Britain, where in recent years the vineyards of Chardonnay and other sparkling wine grapes have increased by 149%.
Even the new wine markets, such as the US and New Zealand, will be replaced by realities that today have no importance in the wine sector and are only fortunate to find themselves further north in terms of latitude.
The appeal is therefore addressed to all the rulers: BE FAST!
