Josh writes: Here’s an odd thing.
Replying to Tweeter ‘Hot Topic’, who was highlighting this article in the Guardian, Gavin Schmidt said that there are “More than 10x number of English vineyards now than in medieval times.” with a link to a 2006 Real Climate article.
Gavin implies that this comparison trumps the argument about English vineyards being proof that Medieval Warm Period was hotter.
However, one can conclude that those who are using the medieval English vineyards as a ‘counter-proof’ to the idea of present day global warming are just blowing smoke (or possibly drinking too much Californian).
Hang on a sec! Surely you would not compare the two without mentioning the population size – the number of people buying and drinking the stuff – I mean that would be unscientific, wouldn’t it?
A quick bit of research and doing some sums, admittedly by a cartoonist, gave me approximate ratios of 15 Vineyards per million in medieval times compared to 7.5 Vineyards per million today. That means that if you want to use Vineyards as a proxy for temperature (I wouldn’t) the MWP was twice as hot as it it today!
I think we can conclude that this is simply Vintage Gavin (pronounced Ga-Vin) and we should all be enormously cheered up by the logic of climate science – what they can brew up with numbers is very entertaining.
Please embibe responsibly. No more that two units of Climate Science per day.
***
P.S. I didnt see it at the time but William Briggs also noted Gavin’s omission.
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They are not even planting the same plants….
This is right, but only half the story. Most modern grape planting in England is aimed at producing a champagne style wine because this is the best wine to make in a cool climate. The addition of a sugar and yeast syrup before bottling, and more sugar in wine after the plug of residue has been removed, allows the vintner to adjust the wine to compensate for poor summers. This technique was not practised in Europe until Dom perigean (1638-1715) perfected a technique that then became widespread in the 19th century.
Red wines require hotter summers than white, and the evidence is that this is what the Romans grew in Britain. Significant Roman vineyards have been found have been in Northamptonshire.
So in summary, we now make more wine because our techniques have improved. To extrapolate that it is now warmer is intellectual incompetent.
Dale
English Wine Producers, 2015
‘The history of the English wine industry during Pre-Roman times’
Follow the links on this webpage for the history of English wine up-to and including the present.
http://www.englishwineproducers.co.uk/background/history/history-pre-roman-to-roman-britain
Not incompetent, fraudulent.
Dale, even in Yorkshire red predominated. Those Romans drank wine instead of the local water.
UNFCCC and IPCC IS what we Call Cultural Marxism. And since they have the “liberating tolerance” it means that they, even if they are worng, are still right….?
To make a fair comparison you have to take into account the type of plants being grown then and now, plus the great improvements in modern viticulture which includes technology, the knowledge as to how to create a good balanced wine by (say) adding sugar, combining one wine with another, the ability to protect plants from frost, harvesting at the optimum time, greater wealth allowing more time to be spent on the vineyard as a full time venture rather than fitting in with lots of other activities. Also bear in mind that beer was generally a preferred drink in the past and that very good wine was available to the aristocracy from British possessions in France.
The amount of people wanting to buy wine and able to afford it would, as has been pointed out, also have been much greater today than in our sparsely populated past.
The Domesday book does however reveal an astonishing number of vineyards bearing in mind the caveats above
tonyb
Also bear in mind that beer was generally a preferred drink in the past and that very good wine was available to the aristocracy from British possessions in France.
Beer was mainly brewed in monasteries but was generally regarded as an inferior drink, also remember a very popular drink of that time was mead, all the warriors drinking in the ‘mead halls’ a la the poems of Taliesin. Bear in mind that wine had an important role in the christian religion.
Phil
Maybe in 6th century Wales where the Taliesin was written, but more generally in England in the period being dicussed here? I don’t think so
‘Nonetheless, mead, once the most common alcoholic drink of England, had lost ground to ales and beers (since the earliest days of improved medieval agriculture) and also to wines (imported from Gascony for the wealthy, from the 12th century onward.’
http://www.britannica.com/topic/mead
Mind you, Climate matters can be pedantic enough without discussing the relative claims of beer and mead (or when the MWP was). What I found interesting-and didn’t know before your comment, was that Mead fell totally out of favour in England after the Reformation, as the honey used in its creation was diverted to beeswax candles!
When’s a good quiz when you need one?
tonyb
Grape wine was the per se “drink of choice” in England, Germany and other northern European countries preceding and during the Medieval Warm Period but the Little Ice Age putt a “ke-bosh” to that habit and forced the aforementioned to become brewers and imbibers of beer and ale.
And that is exactly why America became a nation of “beer drinkers”. The majority of immigrants into North America during the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries were from Northern European countries and they brought their love of beer and their “beer brewing” skills with them.
Maybe in 6th century Wales where the Taliesin was written, but more generally in England in the period being dicussed here? I don’t think so
The Roman period was being discussed and Taliesin was just after then. Good find about the beeswax Tony!
Also later having a royal family that ruled important wine growing areas of France certainly boosted the consumption of wine.
The other point is that southern Britain during the time referred to was not a continuous population. During the Roman period the Romans favored wine but the indigenous Celts favored Ale and Mead (Taliesin). Following the Roman period we have a few hundred years when the Angles and Saxons invasion took place, and as Tacitus tells us their favored drinks were beer and ale. Following the conversion to christianity monasteries started to institute vineyards to produce wine for the Eucharist (other than that wine was very expensive, see Aelfric’s ‘Colloquy’). Bede refers to vines being grown in Britain in the 8th century. Following the Norman invasion in 1066 we have a ruling elite which preferred wine which they brought from their territories in France and this demand led to considerable expansion of vineyards in the Bordeaux region.
Consequently it’s an oversimplification to ascribe the change in the number of vineyards to climatic changes and to ignore the massive changes in the culture summarized above. It’s worth noting that when the vineyards declined in the 14th century they were replaced by apple orchards, this probably was a response to a change in the climate, as is the recent expansion of vineyards in Britain (even in Wales).
Phil
Other than at the edges I don’t really think we are disagreeing with each other and your final paragraph is especially pertinent. I have seen records (in the Met office archives) of grape vines being grown in Exeter by the Romans. We still have much of our Roman wall but the Celts were always very close by in this part of England.
Exeter quay is a good place to note the considerable imports of wine from our possessions overseas in medieval times and to try out the modern day examples.
Tonyb
Samuel C. Cogar October 29, 2015 at 5:40 am
Grape wine was the per se “drink of choice” in England, Germany and other northern European countries preceding and during the Medieval Warm Period but the Little Ice Age putt a “ke-bosh” to that habit and forced the aforementioned to become brewers and imbibers of beer and ale.
Not according to Tacitus, Bede, Aelfric et al.
Worth mention is that New World root stock is used on just about every wine grape today, as it is more resistant to a particular new world bug that almost destroyed European wine grapes. So they litterally are not the same plants as then.
Also, some new / old world hybrids have been made to increase cold tollerance, along with a lot of work on selection for cold tollerant cultivars of old world stocks (cut over onto the new world rootstocks).
It really is increadibly stupid to claim that vineyards today show it is warmer. A few million people /years of work have gone into making more cold tollerant wine grapes…
E.M, TonyB, Phil JM, Barb and Climatereason,
Whenever I contemplate the works of Mr Schmidt and The Good Professor Karl and their NASA or NOAA colleagues I find Mead, Ale, Beer and Whisky seems to do wonders for my understanding of their data and conclusions.
Now let us not speak ill of those not here but suffice to to say that I think they might have that response too!
E.M.Smith,
It seems that I most always learn something new from your postings.
Breaking Wow… NOAA refuses to provide Congress with e-mails on study claiming climate pause never happened
Yes, it is breaking news. Thanks, Eliza. Here is a link:
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2015/1028/NOAA-refuses-to-comply-with-House-science-committee-subpoena
WOW, considering that all appropriations bill must begin in the House, there is a budget and debt ceiling brouhaha looming, and a new Speaker of the House being elected on the 29th and COP21 starting on the 30th; refusing to honor a Congressional
Science Committee subpoena seems very foolish and ill-timed! The Warmists must be very desperate, angering the people that control your purse strings is never a good idea.
They have provided the data, just not communications between those working on the adjustments. I think we should keep that in mind when talking about this. The data should be enough to rebut their tweaks.
When it comes to defending the agenda, some subpoenas are more equal than others:
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2008/04/17/21908/epa-defies-subpoena-to-turn-over-documents/
Searches on Yahoo, Bing, Google and Duck Duck Go have very little on this when the terms ‘NOAA defies subpoena’ are used.
Funny:
Former NOAA employee, Andrew Rosenberg, told Nature that Dr. Karl’s team was merely updating analysis.
“There’s absolutely no implication that there is malfeasance of any kind,” Dr. Rosenberg told Nature. “You could ask these questions anytime anybody updates an analysis, but you are only picking the ones where you really don’t like the answer.”
Well, yeah, of course. Welcome to science, Mr. Rosenberg: You are SUPPOSED to share your reasoning and analysis with someone who questions it, doubly so if they’re trying to find something wrong with it. That’s how we sort out truth from falsity, or more prosaically, trustworthy from untrustworthy data and credible from incredible hypotheses.
What Mr. Rosenberg also misses is that any time a study is released that contradicts previous findings, it deserves close scrutiny. Doesn’t mean it’s wrong, but if anything, it needs to be more clearly explained than a study that merely replicates previous findings.
Tim Huck:
They only conceded the publicly available data, not the pre-processed or processing data, nor all of the processing steps required.
Long standing? What since Mann’s emails at UVA were FOIA?
Interesting interpretation. I had government and non-government contracts in Canada that required every bit of information to be turned over to the including e-mails, diary notes, and even records of telephone conversations as they considered them pertinent to the development of the designs and procedures and useful in replicating the work in the future. Similarly, we archived all the same information for our own purposes on our projects for reproducibility in the future. I think that to suggest the information is not pertinent is disingenuous.
Well done Josh – excellent as ever.
The other aspect of this is where the vineyards are/were located, especially with respect to latitude. The recent vineyard growth has mainly been restricted to the south east of England which, unsurprisingly, has a climate similar to northern France. By contrast, the Romans planted vineyards in England significantly further north which implies (although doesn’t prove), warmer climate in those times.
Well, as a counter-point. This was before Pasteurization. If Romans wanted wine, they had to grow the grapes locally or they would end up drinking vinegar. This means that it was worthwhile to grow them in sub-optimal conditions if it was close to the customer. Nowadays, you would be foolish to grow grapes in anything less than optimum conditions since transport is so easy.
Also, as has been mentioned. These are different vines. Almost all of the old world vines were destroyed by an American fungus during the Industrial Revolution, and they were replanted or crossbred with American varieties that were resistant to the disease, so these are effectively American breed grapes being grown globally now.
It’s not anywhere near directly comparable.
So it’s comparing Apples with Oranges?
More like comparing vitis vinifera with vitis labrusca.
Wine making is means of preserving grape juice so that it can be kept and transported if needed. Amphorae were used primarily for wine transport and the ancient world is littered with cast off amphorae. The practice of transporting wine was well developed in Roman Britain. Pasteurization has nothing to do with transporting wine.
There is NO pasteurization being done in the wine industry, specifically in CA. I lived, worked and made wine in the CA wine area for 28 years and NEVER even heard of pasteurizing wine. The LAST thing you ever want to do is HEAT must/wine! There are various methods of killing the “natural” enemy’s of good wine, including chilling, not heating. Further, the Romans were very knowledgeable must controllers and once wine is fully fermented out (alcohol content 10+ %) and kept from direct oxygen contact (for a long period of time) and HEAT, chemical changes occur VERY slowly over a long period of time and it CANNOT become vinegar, even if NOT kept in a stable environment. The Romans knew this very well so they would ferment the grape where grown and then transport the wine wherever locally over land by horse and wagon and by ships all the way back to Rome, the hold temp of ships being relatively stable. The period of time in both cases not being long enough for any damage to occur. And as for Phylloxera blight of the late 1800’s, it only lasted 20 years and while it did destroy about 90% of French vineyards the rest of Europe was greatly spared and while the one could say the grapes there now are different, as the French vines were graphed to American ROOT stock (which did NOT solve all the problems) there was no “crossbreeding” used to solve the Phylloxera issue. AND none of that has anything to do with Climate Change.
Bob, Pasteruization was invented for wine in 1864, while the great Chemist was on vacation in Arbois, to prevent wine from souring. Thanks for the technical corrections on the vines as well. Bill, amphora were common, but inland transport, even on well maintained Roman highways was difficult and expensive, Mass transport of wine simple could not be done, especially in the short span of time necessary to keep the wine from spoiling. Imported wines (even if available) were ludicrously expensive. Routine wine drinking had to be done with local stock unless you were the social elite.
Both of you are missing the point entirely.
My point is that this doesn’t have anything to do with climate change. Using grape growing as a proxy is a very bad idea because there are significant changes in the vines, farming, and economics since the Roman and Medieval eras.
Having been an amateur winemaker, I can assure you that pasteurization has nothing to do with basic winemaking. In fact, introducing a level of pasteurization would basically kill your yeast bacteria and stop fermentation. You do stop fermentation through other means, but pasteurization is at no point a part of the process.
>>Amphorae were used primarily for wine transport and
>>the ancient world is littered with cast off amphorae.
Indeed, the former comment is nonsense. I think if someone found that their bottle of Domaine Leflaive Montrachet Grand Cru had been pasteurised, there would be a revolution…!
Wine was exported and imported all over the Roman Empire, and the resulting pile of amphorae in Rome grew so large it became known as the Monte Testaccio (Mountain of Pottery).
The Monte Testaccio.
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/large/77797770.jpg
>>Ben of Houston
>>This was before Pasteurization. If Romans wanted wine,
>>they had to grow the grapes locally or they would end up
>>drinking vinegar.
I think this comment is very illustrative, because it is typical of the Green-Liberal lobby. They know absolutely nothing about science, technology or the real world, and yet they confidently pontificate as if they had PhDs in everything. And the equally brain-dead media, who have a ‘F-grade’ in media studies, simply regurgitate the nonsense they spout.
The result is that the inmates are now running not just the asylum, but Parliament too.
Part of the problem is that there is no educational requirements for becoming a member of Parliament. The system is a bit like taking Joe Blogs from the street, throwing him or her into a cockpit, and letting them fly passengers across the world. Would we do that, in a technical, safety-critical industry? So why do we do it for parliaments?
It is about time that all parliamentarians were vetted to ensure they all had a tertiary education or equivalent plus 20 years in industry, passed an entrance examination, and ensure that they were not lawyers (dissembling and deception are key components of the legal profession).
R
benofhouston
You are operating under several misapprehensions.
A) Wine is never pasteurized!
1) Pasteur was requested to help an industrialist identify why their beet juice turned sour while fermenting instead of alcoholic. Lactic acid was produced instead of alcohol, not acetic acid as vinegar contains.
2) Pasteur identified the bacteria responsible and helped the industrialist reduce the bacteria contagion, not by pasteurization though.
B) Grapes are grown as far north as they can be raised
1) Anywhere grapes are grown, wines are produced.
2) What vineyard is so foolish as to believe that they are too far from buyers?
2a) – Chilean? California? Canadian? Australian? Austrian? None, really.
C) Old World Grapes (vitis vinifera) are not crossbred out of existence.
1) Vitis Vinifera wines utilizing vines that are hundreds of years old are still produced in good quantities. Indeed, many of wine varietal names are dependent on both the specific vitis vinifera vines and terroirs they are grown in (French and Germany legal determinations).
2) It was found that grafting old world vines onto rootstocks, including new world grapes extended the hardiness of the old world grapes.
3) “…grape root aphid, phylloxera, and several fungal diseases (powdery mildew, black rot, and downy mildew). It was not until satisfactory phylloxera-resistant rootstocks were identified and modern fungicides developed that even the limited cold hardiness potential of these varieties could be attained in the field. Recently we have found that V. vinifera varieties will not succeed in soils traditionally used to grow American varieties unless the soil pH is raised to about 6.5.”
3a) Indeed, survival and continued bounty of centuries old vineyards is as simple as proper soil PH.
3b) The apparent susceptibility of Vitis Vinifera vines was primarily based on location. e.g. California planted vitis vinifera vines thrived, New York planted vitis vinifera vines died. Difficult climate conditions impaired wine grape plantings until the funguses, parasites and phylloxera were dealt with.
American crossbreed vines are not known for high quality wines. Vitis Vinifera old world grapes completely free of American grape DNA are still the vast bulk for major wine suppliers of the world.
Josh’s ‘Gavin ordinaire’ is spot on. I believe it will age very well.
It’s never pasteurized now. It was in the 1800s, when mass movement of wine was enabled by pasteurization that greatly lengthened it’s shelf life. We have better methods of preservation NOW. I’ll confess, it was a bit of a tangent that wasn’t terribly relevant. However.
If it’s on a non-controversial topic in encyclopedias and taught in high school chemistry I would think that it falls under the branch of common knowledge. Seriously have y’all never read a biography of Louis Pasteur?
Seriously, y’all are getting way too cooked up in the detail and ignoring the meaning while pontificating on the wrong side of well known facts. This is a nonsensical “is it acidification” fight all over again
benofhouston:
Pasteur is a pillar of science. Yes, I have read Pasteur’s biography.
I also remember grade school texts that misstated many of the great man’s work and achievements.
Pasteur identified the pathogens and processes that caused fermentation to go sour (bacterial lactic acid formation) rather than alcoholic.
Pasteur also developed the process called pasteurization which found success in processing milk. The same process was proposed for beer and Pasteur patented a beer pasteurization machine and process.
What Pasteur also identified were the pathogens that ‘could’ be sterilized out by pasteurization or could be prevented by other methods.
Beer for example, the mix is cooked briefly before being introduced to the fermentation tank along with the yeast. There is no ‘pasteurization’ of the fermented liquid after fermentation before bottling.
Milk was originally pasteurized to stem the spread of tuberculosis. Nowadays milk is primarily pasteurized to prevent brucellosis.
While pasteurizing wine was proposed as being suitable, cooked wine is very different in taste. Pasteurization never caught on for wine processing as even the lowest temperatures necessary to pasteurize wine unfavorably change wine’s flavors.
This is not to say that Pasteur did not greatly affect the wine industry. Pasteur’s identification of the pathogens involved and what conditions those pathogens thrived under or failed to thrive.
Winemakers learned to sterilize their fermentation tanks and equipment and to ensure that the fermentable medium was prime for alcohol yeast fermentation and less suitable for lactic acid fermentation. While natural yeasts are present on the skins of grapes, many vintners help spark the correct ferment by introducing yeast.
Vintners are spike the grape mash towards alcohol fermentation by introducing anti-microbial SO2. Alcohol fermentation yeast are much more tolerant of SO2 than malolactic bacteria.
This is not controversial history, if one accepts what people ‘think’ they know when they jot something down. A little light reading quickly enlightens anyone seeking the truths about Pasteur; and it is heartening to note that even wikipedia gets it correct sometimes, e.g.
Did you see in there anywhere “saved the wine industry”?
You are correct that in that you are getting too ‘cooked’ up with the wrong details.
We were lucky in Australia, not far from where I live an isolated vineyard was the only one to not get the fungal disease. Many years later their hundred year old vines were the source of restarting the Australian wine industry.
Are Hansen, Schmidt and Mann all related to each other in some way? Or does having “that certain look” cause them all to think alike? Has anyone else noticed this resemblance?
When I worked for a dental college there was a professor there who taught the fledgling “doctors” how to have a look and demeanor of authority about them. Right down to makeup and hairstyles, speech and mannerisms.
I’ve always found it funny that the spokesman on the All State commercials reminds me of Obama.
He does not look or sound anything like Obama. And he’s about a foot taller and 70 lbs. heavier.
Why should the warmists care about obvious errors when the mainstream news media has effectively agreed to only report their side of the story?
Correct PiperPaul, the alarmists only need to come up with a story. They know in advance that it does not have to be true, or even plausible, because they know that the mainstream media will run with it without question.
By comparison with “now” Angle-land was virtually uninhabited circa William the Conqueror.
If Schmidt actually wrote that then he is a complete buffoon. Maybe he is claiming that every person who owned a thatched roof hut and grew a vegetable garden for sustenance, also grew grapes and therefore qualified it to be a vineyard. I am not going to work too hard to make him make sense. -jeese…what a moron.
Just saw the “Zero Proof” label. Very funny.
+
Ha! “0% Proof” 🙂 I love it!
“Proof” and “percent” are different, but… among the other great puns here, that one was my favorite, and made me laugh out loud.
“In the United States, alcoholic proof is defined as twice the percentage of ABV.” (Wiki)
Send a bottle to Gavin.
“Proof” in legal terms descends from distillate being “proved” as having as much alchohol as water. It was done by shaking a container of distillate and observing the bubbles. Right around 50% alchohol the behavior of the air bubbles formed by vigorous shaking changes. Water, of course, forms and preserves bubbles well due to surface tension etc. The distillate doesn’t because the alchohol alters those characteristic in the distillate.
US middle of America country boys learned that early. Saves taxes.
John H. Harmon,
I was under the impression that 100 proof booze was ascertained by whether it would stay ignited if exposed to a flame. 100 proof booze ~ 40% alcohol by volume or 32% by mass. I can’t recall where I got that impression but is that the case? “0” proof would also be zero percent, and like Gavin Schmidt, without verifiable substance.
Is this related somehow to Captain Cook’s 97% brew?
As if number of vineyards itself is purely representative of the land area as well.
Gavin needs to take some remedial science courses, or be de-programmed.
Some great news for Albertans; Tim Flannery has been called in as an environmental consul.
More assistance for our self-imposed poverty building team.
Please, can Alberta keep him? Please!
Hey Gavin…size matters !!!!
A good response tweet to Gavin would be,
John
Chateau La Fit Le Data! Brilliant! Ooh your are naughty, Josh! Yes the Romans had vinyards as far north as Yorkshire. Also, not mentioned, is the relatively new popularity of wine with the general populace since the late 70s early 80s. Before then, wine was for high days & holidays, eg Christmas/Easter, dining out etc. General consumptions was limited to the “working classes” to beer/ale/spirits, etc. The people have become far more knowledgable about wine today than 30 years ago, say, coupled with foreign holidays to France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, etc. Next time, Gavin, do some ruddy homework before you make ridiculous unfounded pronouncements!!!! Doesn’t say much about your methodology, could imply the same approach applies to your climate science????
As stated by Lamb (Lamb H.H., 1966. The changing climate, Methuen, London, 236 pp.), grapevine cultivation was always possibile in the South of England due to the presence of a mild oceanic climate. The real problem is the high number of rainy days (180-200 per year) and the low presence of sunny days in summer that gives rise to very low quality wines.
By consequence at the end of the Medieval Climatic Optimum the English people decided to abandon grapevine cultivation and to import wines from Bordeaux (France).
The present expansion of viticulture in UK is primarily the result of the technological progress (e.g. the substantial improvement of the vinemaking technology, the availability of early varieties and the new chemicals against fungal diseases). My conclusion is that the English climate is non suitable for viticulture today, and the same was in the past and probably will be in the future. Furthermore the use of time series of grapevine surface as a proxy of temperatures is simply wrong.
Luigi,
Just another proxy problem for Gavin. Stack it next to Briffa’s sole tree ring.
The population of England is about 53 million souls as of 2011. In AD 1000 , the population is estimated to be 1.5 million. Today there are 35X more people.
http://www.domesdaybook.co.uk/life.html#6
(The “doomsday” book was called as such because it was a medieval census document that prompted the doom of taxes)
What an opening. This raises the question of how many vinyards were in California during medieval times. And what, if anything, that means. 🙂
De-cant handle the truth! In vino veritas! Put a cork in it Ga-vin. Sour grapes do not become you.
The best is that the matter can be studied further in some interesting libraries, such as, Bibliothèque nationale de France founded in 1368.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_from_the_United_Kingdom#Roman_to_19th_century
I think that one will find a strong correlation between the number of vineyards and the number of wine drinkers in an increasing population.
Roman warm period, Gavin?
Roman warm period, Gave ?
I think the bottle should read “Chateau Le Fib”
Are the sizes of the bottles adjusted by year or just the amount that is put in them?
Oxford English Dictionary
embibe
obs. form of imbibe.
1558 Warde Alexis’ Secr. (1568) 2 b, When it is almost waxen drie, embibe or water it again as before.
Well I suppose we ARE looking at the mediaeval past!
I just can’t believe anyone would think using the number of English vineyards as a proxy for temperature is a valid argument. I realize some alarmists push the envelope of stupidity to limits never before achieved but this would be too much of a stretch for even them.
Was the number of deaths caused by heat stroke and dehydration lower in the medieval times too? That would be the clincher!
You can’t fix stupid, not even with duct tape.
Samuel C. Cogar October 29, 2015 at 5:40 am
Grape wine was the per se “drink of choice” in England, Germany and other northern European countries preceding and during the Medieval Warm Period but the Little Ice Age putt a “ke-bosh” to that habit and forced the aforementioned to become brewers and imbibers of beer and ale.
Not according to Tacitus, Bede, Aelfric et al.
This is so dumb that it is painful to contemplate.
Is Gavin familiar with the slight demographic and agricultural changes that have occurred in the UK since medieval times. He seems to have neglected to mention any of these less than subtle factors.
Obviously, the comparison of the growing ranges of different grape varieties grown using different technologies, even potentially under the shelter of local UHI, etc etc. – this is all a matter of comparing apples with oranges.
BUT, a few moments of research and I have discovered some remarkable information about modern viniculture.
Please take the time to view this paper on frost protection of grapes in Tazmania.
“This project, developed as a result of devastating frosts across southern vineyards in the late 1990’s, was
designed to indicate the need, and possible future directions, for research on two aspects of frost protection causing concern among vignerons. In cooler areas, damage to vines by spring frosts and subsequent losses in yield has become a critical issue determining profitability in production of high quality, cool climate wines. Frost protection options include various types of irrigation, heaters, wind machines and
some commercial spray on materials promoted as frost protectants. Heaters have become too expensive
to operate, and irrigation (although of proven effectiveness) places heavy demands on water supplies and
drainage systems. In many areas, wind machines are preferred in spite of possible noise pollution
restrictions, but installation guidelines generally do not cover sloping sites”
As a note of explanation a “wind machine” is a giant reverse wind turbine, as can be seen on page 10.
It’s a brilliant idea – you put energy in and it turns some giant aerofoil blades.
And in the process – it warms the planet and generates CO2. Genius, really.
Should we not be encouraging our governments to subsidize the installation of thousands of such devices on every hilltop.
Take a look at page 10, I am not kidding about this:
http://www.gwrdc.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/UT-99-1.pdf
Sorry, photo on page 10, as numbered by your pdf reader. Page 9 as numbered in the document itself.
And apologies for the poor editing which I seem to have copied and pasted into the quote above.