Dull Palates: WUWT deniers are not connoisseurs of wine

While flailing about for some science to deny, Anthony Watts has put up another article by Eric Worrall (archived here). Eric copied and pasted an excerpt from an article about wine. If Eric thinks that climate change isn't affecting wine production, he's wrong. Just as science deniers don't have a clue about science, neither do they have a clue about wine.

The article was from Reuters, and it was about winemakers and wine grape growers adapting to climate change. Although it had a positive slant, everyone who knows anything about wine knows that climate change is going to change the type and taste of wine.

The article did put a positive spin on the situation, saying that grapes are adaptable. That may be so, but if a winemaker wants a particular wine, they'll be getting the grapes from different places in the future, if they can. Here's the bit that Eric Worrall copied:

Good news for wine drinkers: a leading international body says grape vines are a hardy little number and can survive climate change, at least over the medium term.

Earlier harvesting, changes in grape varieties and new wine-making processes have already helped counter the impact of the harsher weather hitting vineyards across the globe, the head of the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) says.

“Wine producers all over the world have adapted to the changes and the plant has a capacity of adjustment that you can find in no other plant,” OIV Director General Jean-Marie Aurand told Reuters in an interview.

He cited the example of the Canary island of Lanzarote where vines are grown in lava which absorbs overnight dew – virtually the sole water they receive in the summer – and releases it during the day.

In China, he said, more than 80 percent of production acreage is located in regions where temperatures can drop below minus 30 degrees Celsius (-22 degrees Fahrenheit) in winter. Growers cover vines to protect them and uncover them when spring comes.

Notice the second and third paragraphs in particular. It's clear that climate change is already affecting vineyards. So for people that yearn for wines of the 1970s from their favourite winemaker, they'll probably never get it again.

Yet Eric Worrall blithely wrote:

This kind of broad range of growing conditions seems common. Pick up any vegetable seed packet from your local garden shop, and you will see instructions for growing the plant in a wide range of climatic conditions, in different regions of your country.

That shows that he's probably a beer swiller, not a connoisseur of fine wine.

Eric seemed to think that wine is wine is wine. It's not. At least not to people who enjoy wine. Climate (and weather) makes all the difference. The same variety grown one year will yield a different tasting wine to that grown another year. That's just from slightly different weather (and why the vintage of a wine is important). When the whole climate changes, then some varieties will no longer be suitable.

Wine grapes: A highly climate sensitive crop

I went to the website of the International Organisation of Vine and Wine and found that there were a whole lot of papers from the 38th World Congress of Vine and Wine. At least two of the papers were about climate change. One of them starts with this sentence:

Grapes for wine production are a highly climate sensitive crop and vineyard water budget is a decisive factor in quality formation.

I've written before about how some of Australia's fine winemakers and wine grape growers from Victoria are setting up operations further south. And about the only place further south you can go is Tasmania. I quoted an article from news.com.au:

Brown Brothers Wineries CEO Ross Brown said he was sufficiently alarmed by climate change to have started relocating production of cooler varieties to Tasmania’s Tamar Ridge winery.

I'm not really surprised to find that WUWT deniers are not wine lovers. They are not what you'd call a sophisticated bunch. (Eric isn't a coffee snob either. It looks as if to him, one coffee bean is the same as any other, which is also not a surprise.)

From the WUWT comments

Latitude doesn't even know that weather is changing:

October 31, 2015 at 8:09 am
helped counter the impact of the harsher weather hitting vineyards across the globe,……..
say what?

Ernest Bush thinks maybe an ice age is coming:

October 31, 2015 at 8:47 am
As far as I know the most sought after wines grow in what most would consider harsh weather. Temecula, CA, has really hot, dry summers and mild winters. In Santa Rosa, the heart of California wine country it sometimes feels like Yuma, AZ, in summer. In fact they are trying to learn to grow wine grapes south of Phoenix, but I haven’t tasted anything from there I like. Table grapes are grown in Yuma County and some of the hottest places in California. Grape growers will have no problem if warming picks up again for a long time. The problem will come if the other shoe drops, and we all get a little colder. 

Hugs knows zilch about wine grape growing (and farming):

October 31, 2015 at 10:31 am
“the plant has a capacity of adjustment that you can find in no other plant
Christ!
Who could take such a statement as a fact?
Fact is, winemakers are not seeing any trouble, as yearly variation overwhelms any global component in local variation. There is absolutely no point of telling Vitis is capable to adjust as of course it is. All plants need to adjust to differing years. The delicate balance of Nature is not so delicate!
The long term 0.01 degree C/year change means the average optimum climatic zone might move 10 meters up the hill in a decade. That won’t stop any farming! 

References and further reading

Papers from the 38th World Congress of Vine and Wine

From the HotWhopper archives

• Australia's wine industry is moving south to escape the heat - July 2014
• Anthony Watts doesn't have reds under his bed (or in his cellar) - May 2014