A September 9th story published by National Public Radio (NPR) asked the question: Can the most popular red wine in the U.S. endure climate change? The answer is yes, despite the story falsely suggesting the opposite. Data suggests that Napa valley grapes have survived hotter temperatures in the past, and despite over 30 years of modest global warming, grape production has actually increased in the area.
Here are some excerpts of the article:
But increasingly severe heat waves are taking a toll on the grape variety, especially in late summer during ripening. As temperatures keep rising, the wine industry is slowly confronting a future where Napa may not be the prime cabernet region it once was.
…
The vineyard is already at the hotter northern end of Napa Valley, but the extreme heat in recent years has been a wake-up call. A late-summer heat wave in 2022 hit temperatures just under 120 degrees at the vineyard, she says.
“When it gets that hot, the vines, they’re done,” she says. “They’re going to go dormant, and when that happens, they’re not ripening anymore.”
First, the author Lauren Sommer is conflating a short-term heat wave with long term climate change. Secondly, according to temperature records, while Napa valley set a new high temperature record of 114°F on September 6th 2022, it was only a degree hotter than the previous high temperature record of 113°F, set 61 years of global warming ago, in 1961.
A one-degree difference on one day spanning 61 years is not indicative of climate change, but simply natural weather variation. Weather does not operate in the same time span as climate. Figure 1 below, plotted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric administration (NOAA), displays monthly average high temperature for September. It is clear that that NAPA county has experienced a number of hot Septembers throughout its history. Some were even higher than September 2022 when the entire month is averaged:
Note that many past Septembers had monthly average temperatures greater than or equal to September 2022.
In the table that NOAA provides with the graph plot, they indicate that September 2022 was not unusual at all, ranking 121 out of 129 years for maximum temperature, indicating that eight previous Septembers were hotter:
Also, production numbers for red grapes indicate that their output has not been harmed by recent temperatures. Figure 3, below, tracking grape production in California, with Napa in green, shows a steady increase in in tonnage harvested, not just in the Napa region, but for all regions:
If long-term climate change was in fact detrimental to wine grape production, surely it would show up data informing figure 3, but it doesn’t. Climate change doesn’t come in the form of a single day’s hot temperatures, such as what NPR is conflating, it comes in the form of sustained increases over time.
The data suggests NPR’s Lauren Sommer may have been drinking too much wine when she wrote that story or, more likely, she failed to look into the actual temperature and grape production data before commencing to write a story in the “climate change causes everything bad” narrative; choosing her anecdotes to fit the narrative..
We can add this poorly researched story to the dozens of similar stories that Climate Realism has taken the media to task over faulty or selective reporting. Obviously, wine grapes can and have endured climate change, and the media is just dealing in scary stories without merit. NPR’s reporting on grapes seems more an expression of “sour grapes” at so many alarming climate scare stories having been debunked, rather than factual reporting on any dangers facing grape and wine production.
Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front of, and behind the camera as an on-air television meteorologist since 1978, and currently does daily radio forecasts. He has created weather graphics presentation systems for television, specialized weather instrumentation, as well as co-authored peer-reviewed papers on climate issues. He operates the most viewed website in the world on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.
Originally posted at ClimateREALISM
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Weird, the usual weather related crop failure with grapes (and coffee) is unseasonable frosts. When one gets the sign wrong on the change, . . .
I have read that the UK had substantial grape/wine production during the medieval warm period
Roman vineyard tools were found near and north of Hadrian’s Wall in Scotland, where Roman garrisons grew grapes, because it was so much warmer than it is now, and there was so much less CO2 ppm, which has nothing to do with global warming.
The Vikings found grapes in Newfound Land around 1000, because it was so much warmer than it is now, and CO2 ppm was much less.
The IPCC and associated entities are a bunch of crooks, and liars, and scare mongers, which has been scientifically proven, but the IPCC says, we have our own science, which is a lot of crappola.
It is high time that crooked gang gets ousted, so we will stop sliding into impoverishment.
I don’t see why countries don’t at least develop and run their own models that include natural causes as well as human causes.
The IPCC set out with a mandate to show human causation and that’s what they did, they built models that ignored some natural causes of warming weather in their models.
That’s not good science and shouldn’t be used for policy decisions, especially when the cost is estimated to be $US200 trillion or $US100,000 per family in the world.
Figuring that 90 percent of the families can’t pay anything, that will make it around $US1million per family in the developed world.
Maybe it will be spread over 100 years making it $US10,000 per year in extra costs and extra taxes.
The IPCC also had the mandate that greenhouse gases cause global warming.
The IPCC is 100% government controlled
It is a WORLD GOVERNMENT tool to impose command/control of the world population
But fast-growing BRICS+ countries, about 35 have applied, with more than 60% of the population and 50% of world gross product, are going to burn fossil fuels, because they rightfully believe CO2 has nothing to do with global warming.
The Romans introduced grape growing to the UK, however not as far north as Scotland, furthest north documented is in Yorkshire. This continued through the Middle Ages typically in vineyards at monasteries to produce wine for communion. In recent years production has increased dramatically (about 700 vineyards) and the sparkling wines produced win international prizes. The furthest north commercial vineyard is Ryedale vineyard in Yorkshire. https://www.ryedalevineyards.co.uk
No, it ended with the Romans, the wine drinkers, leaving, and Roman Warm Period ending, and the cold Dark Ages beginning.
No grapes for hundreds of years during the Dark Ages
Grapes returned about 1000, during Viking times and Medieval Warm Period
Actually before then, as I said frequently associated with monasteries. The Domesday book (1086) listed 42 vineyards in England, 12 attached to monasteries. Rather than the weather, invasions and wars across the country were a major adverse factor.
There are published archaeological accounts of tons of grape seeds excavated from Dark Age Danish sites and also a famous exchange between a Scandinavian bishop and the Vatican on providing sacramental wine to churches in Iceland and Greenland
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2015/06/mark-steyn-medieval-cooler-than-now.html
Like the Silk Road , the MWP was not dreamed up until the 19th century. How do modern historians view your position ?
Modern society has to understand the threat caused by this tribe of middle aged females with no or little scientific qualifications publishing global warming scare stories.
The other related threat comes from journalist groups like Covering Climate Now, from whom other lazy journalists buy canned climate change articles of poor quality. The motivation seems to be mainly more money.
Geoff S
Bloomberg’s green energy research team estimates $US200 trillion to stop warming by 2050.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-07-05/-200-trillion-is-needed-to-stop-global-warming-that-s-a-bargain
Bloomberg investors want $US275 trillion spent.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-21/investors-call-for-policy-unleashing-275-trillion-for-net-zero
There are 2 billion households in the world, $US200 trillion works out to $100,000 per household.
Ninety percent of the households in the world can’t afford anything additional, so that is about $1 million per household in the developed world or about $10,000 per year or additional $US834 per month per household for 26 years.
The fact is that almost everyone, especially outside of the Tropics, spends most of their time indoors anyway.
Most families would prefer to have $1 million in the bank and a degree or two of warming.
Absolutely right on- but trying publishing an essay about that in the MSM. You’ll probably get arrested. Or if not arrested- you’ll be shunned. I’m constantly ranting against the climate nut jobs (and forestry haters) here in Wokeachusetts and I have indeed been shunned- even by forestry folks, most of whom have prostrated themselves to the climate opera.
Additional factors to consider could well be 1) Reduced attention span of her target audience, conditioned to take as fact any NPR or general MSM fed information they happen across, and 2) a lack of knowledge on the readers’ part regarding wine grape production history. Were not the estimated general temperatures during the Roman Warm Period considered higher on average than today? Pliny et. al. surely would have lamented the lack of Roman Empire wine production. I guess if DEI garbaggio is taught in school these days, there’s no time left for actual documented history..
Regards,
MCR
Maybe it’s just that the Romans, like modern Italians, just can’t live without wine. And they knew how to best grow them. Perhaps the locals could have been growing grapes for wine even if the temperature wasn’t a bit higher but the locals were busy making whiskey (in the British Isles). 🙂
Native grape species grow just fine in the forests of New England- much colder than the UK.
Yes, but US native grapes (“Concord”) make just plain nasty wine. The ironic thing is that there was vineyard insect infestation in the 19th Century that nearly destroyed French `grape production. the cure was grafting the french grape vines onto American root stock.
Wine was fermented from the ancestor of the same variety in the same latitude 8000 years ago, during the much balmier Holocene Climatic Optimum.
I’m trying to picture a bunch of drunk winos 8,000 years ago.
Maybe they are the ones responsible for all that graffiti we find on old cave walls? 😎
They were having religious experiences.
I used to be a wine junkie. Wine grapes very, but each varietal needs its own terroir. (Soil, winter cold, summer heat, rainfall conditions.) One of the key ‘sophisticated’ summer heat terroir metrics is accumulated degree days from bud to harvest at targeted brix. For Cabernet, it is about 4000 when measured in Fahrenheit—one of the ‘hotter’ varietals. That simply means vintners do not consider a few isolated days are important—it is the net temperature arc over the summer that matters most.
The NPR reporter could have learned about terroir accumulated degree daysin 30 seconds of googlefu. But would have ruined the alarm story. And, Napa County has several terroir—not just Cabernet, but also Chardonnay and Pinot Noir—both requiring a lower accumulated degree days. So even if she were ‘right’, the easy solution would be to move the pinot noir north to Oregon/Washington and replant that Napa terroir in Cabernet.
A prolonged heat wave will affect the harvest quantity and quality (too high a degree day accumulation), no different than a late frost or an early frost. In Germany (mostly growing ‘colder’ white varietals like Reisling) an early frost results in world famous ‘Eiswein’, an intensely delicious specialty because the grape skins rupture on the vine and then naturally lose water but not sugar before being harvested.
The red varietals grown in the Hunter, Mudgee, Central Victoria, Barossa, Clare Valley, and West Australia..
.. absolutely LUV a nice warm summer 🙂
All are eminently drinkable 🙂 🙂
Rud,
My alcohol experiment ended on the wagon in 1982, so no wine expertise remains.
Temperatures. The common metrics of Tmax or Tmean for a day are far from ideal, as you know. Accumulated energy over 24 hours might be better. Then, more complexity is created by miscellaneous definitions of “heatwave”, some created for data torture. This leads to uncertainty about terms like “severe” or “extreme” heatwaves. There is no widespread reference point for people to compare and classify their own heatwave examples, so we are the mercy of people who have no scruples about making stuff up.
To set a reference point of sorts, for Australia, I made this graph for another project but it works here. It shows the daily Tmax for the small inland town of Bourke and for the metropolis Sydney on the coast. Bourke is 650 km NW of Sydney.
Bourke had Australia’s worst recorded heatwave in 1896. Sydney’s worst heatwave was in 1960.
You can see that Bourke could be classed as extreme, while (when the numbers are examined) the Sydney heatwave was a mere 7 deg C above the average of the 3-day and 5-day hottest Sydney heatwave each year from 1860 to now.
The Bourke heatwave looks more like another 15 deg C average hotter than the Sydney worst one. That is “extreme” in my view and suggests that the Bourke example could be a reference for other global locations such as wine districts.
What is the worst US heatwave on record? I’d be keen to see the raw data.
Geoff S
Corn seed is sold on the basis of days above a specified temperature required to mature. Fruit trees also are sold on how long at a given temperature it will take to ripen the fruit.
As I recall, in 2022 it was more about WHEN the heat wave hit. Basically it hit right during the harvest period and pushed vineyards to get fruit off the vines as rapidly as possible. Which stressed wineries because they couldn’t couldn’t get grapes through the fermentation tanks in the usual progression.
If this woman was honest she would have mentioned that 2023 was one of the coolest summers in decades, and vineyards were leaving fruit on the vines trying to drive up the sugar levels because fruit wouldn’t ripen. Here in the Paso Robles area some vineyards were still harvesting the week before thanksgiving.
Also, we’ve been growing some pretty mean Cab down here where temps are significantly warmer on average than Napa.
Further to Rud’s point, these are known as Growing Degree Days ( or GDDs). A common metric across many Ag fields. As it applies to grapes, each varietal has as an optimum GDD number for ideal phenolic maturity. So, if it is “hot” growing season, this mostly means an early harvest, not a destruction of the crop.
Vinticilture 101.
Lots of very good videos on YouTube about wine growing- and they don’t cry about the climate- they talk about the things you just discussed.
Yeah quality is dependent on a fairly narrow range of metereological conditions. This is the reason wine grapes are not grown everywhere and quality varies from vintage to vintage. Quality can be leveled by food science but wine that is the product of a food science project is lower in quality. It may be enjoyable and good to drink but it doesn’t soar like the great wines of the great growing areas of the best vintages. It never does. Great wine have become rare, expensive and collectiable.
Wine quality is dependent on grape varieties and their various clones, vineyard location and culture. Grapes needs lot’s off sun but not too much heat. High humidity makes growing expensive due to the need for a rigorous schedule of fungacidal spraying. Too hot and the wine is overripe and flat because it lacks the acid it needs for structure and to develop the varietal flavor esters. Adding Verajuice and/or water, (acidic unriped grape juice and water) turns the wine into a lower quality food science project. Too cool and the grapes do not ripen enough requiring the addition of sugar to get the alcohol high enough to develop flavor estors and perserve the wine. Chaptalization( adding suger) also reduces quality.
Grape growing is risky business. Hail, bittercold in the winter that kills the vines, late frost that kills the buds, Cool damp wet conditions at the end of the season cause grape rot and so on. This has been true for thousands of years. Food science has helped the grape industry weather unprofitable weather but it has not expanded the supply of great natural wines of great vintages because, the best locations for wine grape production are all already known and leveraged. It simply is a limited resource. Grape culture in the great regions of europe, and the meditrarian states is ancient and ongoing.
The demand for great wine has massively explanded since 1990 due to the economic development and growth in the East. The great French, German and Italian wines available for 3-4 dollars a bottle in the 1970’s in D.C. at Central Liqours, are collector’s items that few can afford to drink.
With all that being said, there is plenty of decent table wine for all even if we cannot afford to the great ones. There are still many natural (non-food science projects) out there at a affordable prices and some decent food science projects as well at a decent price.
Grape production keeps expanding due to demand and in general climate is a non-factor. The solar cycle can be a factor. Reduce irradience and inceased cloud cover during minimums reduce grape ripeness but the impact would be varied from location to location.
I would say that economics drives the grape industry and the extent of planting or retraction. This is market driven. It’s very hard to pull a 100 vineyard just because only white dry wines are selling … this happend to my Father in the Fingerlakes in the early 1990’s. He had to pull an entire vineyard of Catawba grapes, 80,000 vines 32 years later, he would make more money with the catawba and concord than with Chardonnay. Go figure. Climate is like weather it’s constantly changing in the weak memories of fools. Who knew that people would once again like sweet wine as well as dry. OR that the world couldn’t get enough Welch’s concord grape juice.. LOL
Portugal grape harvest and temperatures show that it was warmer in the 1860’s and 1940’s than it was around 2010 (graph only goes to 2015).
With the average temperature in the 1860s being 1.5ºC warmer, and the 1940s being 1ºC warmer
And to think- nobody back then said we need to shut down civilization to save the planet! Wiser generations? Or just not everybody knowing everything about everywhere- and the fact that somewhere, every day, there is a weather disaster.
Just saw a YouTube video by a Chinese woman, in China. She was in a region she said was one of the poorest in that nation- for a local celebration. Everybody was walking around with a smart phone. Yuh, everybody with too much access to stuff they should ignore.
The Port trade has good vintage records, but those surviving in France are deeper, more extensive , and leave little doubt that medieval times were warmer in Western Europe than today, because we see frequent northern vintage failures in episcopal and monastic records andinports of fortified wine from Mediterranean Crusader kingdoms into NorthernEurope and the Baltic commence in the 13th century.
2003 saw Burgundy’s earliest harvest since record keeping began, in 1370!
Chandon’s 2003 Corton Charlemagne was picked on August 15, the grapes having already ripened to the heady limit of fermentation- the wine was bottled at 14.5% alcohol!
I’s not just weather. There is a harvest timing issue. 2-4 week variation in harvest timing can confound your key metric.
So in my estimate, the graph above us a composite of the variation of oenological and viticutural factors and temperature…. not just temperature.
In 160 year time frame in Portgeuge viticuture, stuff pretty much remained constant. The variation is rather small.
This is rather amazing considering the population of Portugal went from 4 mil to 11 mil since 1855, in a tiny country and this means urban/surban heat bubbles could influence vineyard temps. It’s surprising that the harvet temps are not much higher in the last 30 years ( greatest population growth). Could be they are harvesting earlier due to the increased heat from the heat bubbles around them causing the harvet temps to be warmer.
Reading the complete NPR article it does take a constructive line:
“Honestly, the more we experiment and learn about how to adapt, I think the wines are just getting better and better” (Winemaker Avery Heelan).
“I think the first thing we’ll be doing is mitigation, hoping to keep it as the true varietal of Napa Valley … what we’re trying to do — is buy time and see what happens with this whole thing” (Winemaker Elias Fernandez).
The article goes on to suggest that winemakers use ‘new strategies’ and consumers adapt to wines that are ‘better suited to a hotter climate’ all of which would apply equally to an ever-changing climate whatever the direction and causes.
The positive approach is a bit surprising given a recent blog article by Jonathan Turley.
The real long-term climates, the arctic, temperate, tropical, desert and rain forest climates are about the same. The deserts are getting greener, so that is a good thing.
The 30-year weather that is now called the “climate” is a always changing, because it is the weather.
The concentration of CO2 is now 426 ppmv. Prior to 1900, the concentration of CO2 was 280 ppmv. Has this this higher concentration of CO2 resulted in an increase of grape yield?
Difficult one, hard to find much info.
But there is this… CO2 Science ….. http://www.co2science.org/articles/V7/N10/B2.php
How much this might affect the fruit.. can’t help you.
You could try to find the references (Lakso, Gamon) at the bottom of the linked page if you want.
Even if it did- how could anyone know, given that there are so many variables effecting grape yield? It’s like trying to correlate CO2 level with the planetary climate.
And even year by year vintages can vary significantly.
Absolutely no way of knowing how CO2 might actually affect the grapes themselves, or the wine made from them..
Wine grapes are not a static product. The varietals are constantly evolving to match consumer demands, changes in agricultural methods, pests, fungal diseases, adaptations to specific conditions of climate, soils, terrain, and other production variables, etc etc. Adaptation and evolution have always been pivotal in virtually all agricultural products. Researchers are always engaged in tweaking existing varieties and developing new hybrids to achieve specific objectives.
Nothing in agriculture has ever been static.
America, when you get tired of being lied to with your own tax dollars, you can end “public broadcasting.” FYI.
The NPR station in Albany, NY is so powerful, you can get it a few hundred miles away. It’s so leftist, that even though Trump “lost” to Biden 4 years ago, that station has never stopped spending most of the day dissing Trump. I got so tired of it I emailed the big honcho for that station telling him that there’s a lot of stuff going in the world so why not move on to other topics- not so much that I wanted to defend Trump, it was just a waste of radio bandwidth. He wrote back telling me to apologize. I told him where to go and what to do with himself. 🙂 Despite him being a far leftist, I’ve found out he makes something like 200K/yr, not bad for running a PUBLIC broadcast radio station. When it comes time for begging everyone to contribute- he does a great job of it- knowing exactly how to make the listeners feel guilty for not contributing. Then I suppose he feels it’s fine to grab as much of that as possible.
The current issue of Smithsonian Magazine has at least two articles blaming climate on bad things. I haven’t finished reading, so there may be more. One says more people die of heat (FL) and the other mentions the demise of bats (Mexico). I can’t help but think of the rebound of Polar Bears after removing the burden of snowmobiles, aircraft, modern rifles, and trophy hunting.
The writers/magazines never return to the topic when nothing scary happens. They just move on.
I’m not a grape expert- but what little I know or think I know is that what grapes don’t like is too much rain because that results in fungal infections. Also, what’s extremely important is how to you grow them. I have a native Concord grape growing wild and don’t bother trimming it. It grows like crazy with foliage on top of foliage- which results in some foliage not drying out after rain- so the foliage gets infected- and if the grapes that develop are not given fresh air and warm sun do dry, they’ll get infected. So, a few degrees warming is irrelevant. It’s more about how to grow them- how to trim the foliage- and not getting too much rain. Apparently, I think, they don’t need much water to grow well. I’m sure I don’t have all this correct and somebody who knows will correct me.
I recall one YouTube video- in France- where the farmer showed how he plants them up in a valley where there will be a constant breeze blowing down from higher up- which keeps the foliage dry.
Grapevines for wines grow in a variety of climates from very hot to very cool.
In Europe we have far too many and far too much wine production, particularly in France – so if Climagheddon reduces their number, all well and good.
There is adaptation and evolution suppose.
Two thousand years ago during the Roman occupation of what is now England, said Romans introduced wine grapes and wine was produced successfully in midland areas. Still going strong a thousand years ago as recorded in the Doomsday Book – but died out during the Little Ice Age. Climate change. Tut!
Some successful vineyards now in southern England using vines selected from the Continent used to for cooler climate.
“Two thousand years ago during the Roman occupation of what is now England, said Romans introduced wine grapes and wine was produced successfully in midland areas. Still going strong a thousand years ago as recorded in the Doomsday Book – but died out during the Little Ice Age. Climate change. Tut!”
The phylloxera plague had a lot to do with the ‘dying out’.
Some successful vineyards now in southern England using vines selected from the Continent used to for cooler climate.
Over 700 vineyards in the UK currently,.
It’s not surprising to see the increase in California wine grape production displayed in UCD’s chart. I moved to NorCal in 1980 and beginning in the late ’80s every Tom, Dick and Harriet who made a fortune in the tech business sought to become vintners. (I was told by one vintner in Napa that the way to make a small fortune is to take a large fortune and start a winery.)
Notably the chart shows little change in Napa, a slight change in Sonoma, and large increases in the Central Valley and other areas. This all makes sense as one could drive south on 101 and see acre after acre of new vineyards around Paso Robles, SLO, and Santa Maria. Plus you’ve got lots of new vineyards around Lodi and Temecula. So what would be more informative is to note the production by acreage.
But I can’t imagine that all these new vintners are getting into the business if “climate change” really poses a threat to grape production. Good wine grapes love a Mediterranean style climate with hot and dry late summer weather and good drainage. And of course different wine grapes like different micro-climates.
All in all these self-styled urinalists just parrot the myths they hear within their little bubbles and regurgitate them to share their ignorance with others.
Assuming they have water and fertile soil, what’s the max/min temps at which grapes can grow?
With ample water vitifera grapevines can survive 100 degree noonday temperatures, and subarctic winters with frost a foot deep. Skill and deem mulching are needed to successfully establish vines where the ground freezes
The present limit is Telemark Norway
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2023/10/come-for-wine-stay-for-skiing.html
On Keuka Lake in the Fingerlakes region of New York, there are many vineyards with Vinefera grape varieties ( Chardonay, Reisling,Pinot Noir, etc) that were planted over 50 years ago; still thriving. In addition, there are many vineyads with Lambrusca varieties such has Concord and Catabwa that were planted in the 1880 and stil thriving.
Warming is a good thing in the Fingerlakes. It’s too bad it didn’t warm up as much as predicted. Vinefera grape varieites can only be planted in the microclimates close to the lakes. Serious warming would have meant serious explansion of of Vinefera vineyards. This would have resulted in a much greater supply of very high quality New York State wine for it’s fans around the world.
They also have marcellus natural gas in huge supply in that region. It could have been a boon to for food proessing and canning as well as brewing. The area is great for growing hops. Too many regulations and other than a dollars, no benefit to the locals who could have used a large supply of cheap NG.