The San Francisco Chronicle posted an article claiming that climate change is harming Cabernet production, specifically in California. This is false. The climate hasn’t appreciably changed for the worse in California amid modest warming. Wildfires are not outside of their historical norm and droughts haven’t become more frequent or severe. Data show fluctuations in Cabernet production across the decades, but no sustained downward trend correlating to global warming or carbon dioxide emissions. In fact, the highest production years for cabernet grape tonnage have all occurred during twenty-first century, supposedly the hottest years on record.
In the story, “Climate change is coming for Cabernet. Here’s how one Napa winery is getting ready,” staff writer, Jess Lander, writes:
In 2019, the greatest threat to California wine was climate change. It felt like a reckoning was coming, especially to Napa Valley, where the future of its crown jewel grape, Cabernet Sauvignon . . ..
Then, suddenly, winemakers stopped talking so much about climate change.
COVID-19 hit in 2020, forcing wineries to close to visitors and find new ways to reach customers. (Remember virtual tastings?) A few months later, more than 30 Napa Valley wineries were damaged or destroyed in devastating wildfires, and smoke from the disasters nearly wiped out an entire vintage. Starting in late 2022, California wine began to feel the effects of an unprecedented downturn in the wine industry. Ever since, California wineries have been in survival mode, battling a litany of challenges, including declining sales and tourism; a major grape oversupply; competition from alternative alcoholic beverages, like seltzers and ready-to-drink cocktails; tariffs and the loss of the Canadian export market; and growing anti-alcohol sentiment among Americans.
In truth, there is no evidence that climate change has ever posed a threat to California or Napa Valley Cabernet production.
Neither drought nor wildfire in California are outside of their normal frequency or severity. Since European colonization of America and migration to California, severe droughts were recorded in 1841, 1864, 1895, 1924, 1928–1935, 1947–1950, 1959–1961, 1976–1977, 1986–1992, 2007–2009, and 2011–2017,2020–2022 and 2024-25. Many of those droughts occurred long before human greenhouse gas emissions rose significantly, when the Earth was cooler. Indeed, historic droughts in California were much more lengthy and severe. Even with the recent droughts, the past two centuries have been relatively wet when compared to California’s historic drought patterns, as seen in the graphic below.
Dozens of Climate Realism posts provide data and reference peer-reviewed studies showing wildfire frequency and severity in California are well below historic norms, even with a small uptick in recent years due to shifts in land management and increasing urban expansion into areas historically prone to wildfires, here, here, here, and here, for instance.
If drought and wildfires haven’t become more common or severe as the climate has undergone a modest change, then that change can’t be behind any Cabernet grape production losses. Even more telling is the fact that Cabernet production is, contrary to what is implied by Lander’s San Francisco Chronicle story, doing well amid modest climate change.
Interestingly, in 2019, seven years ago, CBS News warned “Climate change is coming for your Cabernet,” almost the same title as the San Francisco Chronicle story. Yet just four years later, data from the Wine Institute show that California’s Cabernet production was the state’s second highest on record, with the record being set just the year before CBS bemoaned Cabernet’s supposed fate. Indeed, despite some vineyards closing, resulting in acreage taken out of production and modest warming, no year’s production since 2010 has been lower than any year’s production before then. No year after 2000 experienced Cabernet crushed grape tonnage lower than any year before then. As the graphic below shows, with fits and starts due to normal agricultural ups and downs, California’s Cabernet production has increased dramatically. California’s all-time record for Cabernet production was set in 2018, with 2023 being the second highest production year on record.
Nor, despite the San Francisco Chronicle’s warnings of a climate change induced Cabernet apocalypse, does the industry seem to believe Cabernet production is doomed due to climate change or any other factor, like reduced wine consumption or rising costs amidst falling prices. In fact, ReNub writes concerning the future market for conditions for Cabernet, “[c]abernet Sauvignon Market is expected to reach US$ 789.98 Million by 2034 from US$ 362.23 Million in 2025, with a CAGR [compound annual growth rate] of 9.05% from 2026 to 2034.” (See the image)
Cabernet may face some serious headwinds, but they have nothing to do with climate change. As mentioned, but downplayed in Lander’s article, trade issues, a decline in alcohol consumption among younger demographics, and higher input costs, are among the factors squeezing vintner’s profits. In France, as discussed at Climate Realism here and here, they have a solution, blame climate change for wine’s woes, while pouring excess wine down the drain rather than put it on the market. The problem is a glut of wine suppressing prices, not a surfeit.
The article, “Climate change is coming for Cabernet. Here’s how one Napa winery is getting ready,” is a disservice to the San Francisco Chronicle’s readers, misrepresenting the true state of Cabernet production and its prospects in an attempt to advance the false narrative that climate change is dooming the world, one product, crop, or industry at a time.
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., is the Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy and the managing editor of Environment & Climate News. In addition to directing The Heartland Institute’s Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy, Burnett puts Environment & Climate News together, is the editor of Heartland’s Climate Change Weekly email, and the host of the Environment & Climate News Podcast.
