“The canary in the coal mine” has been an increasingly used saying when one talks about vineyards and the climate crisis. It is easy to understand the challenges that growing grapes and wine production are facing in an ever changing and increasingly unpredictable climate. These were the words used by Greg Jones, a renowned climatologist and member of the Global Steering Committee of the Porto Protocol Foundation, on the CBS program 60 minutes, emphasizing how easily we tell the story of climate change through wine.
In line with this point of view, scientists and historians have established a record of harvests since 1354 and found that the air temperature has warmed so much – especially in the last 30 years – that the grapes are picked almost two weeks earlier than their historical norm1.
“The harvest records are the longest phenological records in Europe”, states Elizabeth Wolkovich, biologist at the British Columbia University, who researches the relationship between wine and climate. “We have hundreds of years of data on the temperatures that were registered in the summer, and we can use this information as a reference thermometer.”
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