Grape Expectations: A Family's Vineyard Adventure in France

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Dice the butter and put in a food mixer bowl with the caster sugar. Beat until pale and fluffy – allow 5-8 minutes for this. And, by changing the grapes’ resident microbes, such shifts may more directly alter wine. In a study led by scientists at the University of California, Davis, researchers collected 273 samples of pressed grapes from California wineries in Napa, Sonoma and San Joaquin counties as well as from along the Central Coast. The researchers analyzed DNA fragments in the samples to show that the microbial populations varied from region to region, even on the same variety of grape. The findings, published in the Jan. 7 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that factors such as heat and humidity had an important influence on the type of microbes that colonize a grape’s surface.

Bordeaux by train: on the right line for wine | Bordeaux Bordeaux by train: on the right line for wine | Bordeaux

But as the world continues to warm, conditions in some areas will sour. Signature wines produced in some of the world’s most famous regions, such as Champagne or Bordeaux, will probably lose some of their quality and character. And the projected temperature changes will make it increasingly difficult for these renowned regions to grow their famed grapes at all, Busalacchi says. Climate researchers simulated how the quality of cabernet sauvignon grown in Western Australia will change by 2070. Using low- and high-warming scenarios, the team predicted declines in acidity and the concentration of a compound called anthocyanin, which gives red wine color.Microbiologist David Mills, who directed the study, says that ultimately, these microbes help in the fermentation process, but they can also affect the wine’s taste. Weather-related events are probably driving some of the year-to-year changes in the grapes’ microbial communities seen in the study, Mills says. Though the team did not set out to look at climate change, “I would argue that climate change itself is going to have an impact” on the quality of wine grapes, he says. Exactly what that impact might be is still unclear. Toasting the future

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The Romans said, ‘in wine there is truth,’ ” Jones says. “The truth now is that the Earth’s climate is changing much faster than the wine business, and it is advantageous for the wine industry to be proactive in assessing the impacts.” He was impressed, basically, and said it was the wine that clinched the deal. He later discovered he’d been fooled, but did he lose his temper? Of course not, this is Sting, a man of such equilibrium that he can listen to Fields of Gold emanating from his own mouth several hundred times a year and still not go insane.In fact, those local differences have conspired to turn a single species of grape, Vitis vinifera, into the source of the vast array of premium wines popular today. Most of the world’s wine production comes from just a few vinifera varieties, including chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, cabernet sauvignon, merlot, pinot noir and Johannisberg riesling. These grapes are extremely responsive to their physical environment. Soil composition, moisture, hours of exposure to sunlight — even the way that the leaves drape over the fruit — all affect the overall quality and taste of the final product, wine. Such factors get at the nature of terroir, a word that ascribes a wine’s uniqueness to the physical environment where grapes grow. L. Hannah et al. Climate change, wine, and conservation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Vol. 110, April 23, 2013, p. 6907. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1210127110.