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Wine’s Shifting Winds
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Wine’s Shifting Winds

Brian Boyle
Daily Upside, 2022
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Winemakers around the world are battling droughts, fires and frosts brought on by climate change, which has led to smaller, less flavorful wine yields in some places. In The Daily Upside, Brian Boyle explores how this new normal affects the budding millennial wine culture. He notes that despite the harmful impact of climate change on grapes and the pandemic’s adverse effect on the bar and restaurant business, the wine industry remains highly profitable.

Summary

Climate change threatens viniculture, the production arm of a $434 billion a year worldwide industry.

In 2020, a wildfire destroyed 67,000 acres of California’s famed wine region. The fire damaged 1,500 structures, including 31 wineries in Napa, Sonoma and Shasta counties.

Many of the world’s wineries are in hot, dry climates, as in California, that are newly prone to wildfires and drought due to climate change.

Droughts and heat waves devastated wineries across Europe. French, Italian and Spanish wineries reported that 2021 brought the worst drought on record and as a result, those nations produced fewer grapes. Higher temperatures and intense frost combine...

About the Author

Brian Boyle is a senior reporter for The Daily Upside.

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