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Making Wine

Climate Change Hurting France’s Winemaking Industry

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Climate change has become a major epidemic in our world. The Amazon Forest is on fire along with California, it’s been snowing in the Midwest since September, our oceans are filled with plastic, and the North Pole is beginning to look like a beach resort. Environmental impact aside, the world’s economies that rely on our planet’s many ecosystems are also in a rapid decline. France is the most recent area of the planet that’s having an economic crisis as a result of climate change, and its happening to one of their most lucrative industries – wine-making. 

The wine industry is built around vineyards and growing nice, healthy grapes that will later be turned into eclectic wines. Now, according to the National Public Radio, French vineyards are being negatively impacted by erratic weather patterns and long periods of heat which lead to drought. It’s not as though vintners aren’t used to seasonal changes and drastic shifts in temperature, however, they’ve never experienced it at the level that’s occurring now. 

“Because of the grapes. They show us the change. Especially in alcohol. The alcohol level has been getting higher in the last five years. These days, the alcohol content by volume can reach 15%, when [I] was a boy, it was maximum 12 [% ABV]. It’s causing me some problems when I start the vinification process, because I have to use new yeast to avoid too much alcohol. It’s really new for me,” said Remi Couppé, to NPR, a fourth-generation winemaker who crafts wine at, grand cru St. Emilion with his brother. 

Higher alcohol content is due to an increase in seasonal temperatures. The escalation causes the grapes to have a larger amount of sugar in them, and therefore a higher alcohol percentage is produced during the fermentation process. During fermentation, yeasts convert the sugar from the grapes into ethanol, the alcohol in wine, so the more sugar, the more ethanol is produced. 

Additionally, Couppé discussed how changes in soil along with the temperatures, have caused new small flowers to begin to grow on the grape vines. This can become a problem because if those flowers are mixed in with the grapes when they’re being broken down and fermented, they can add different flavors to the wine than intended. Also, a big part of the harvesting process is known as “stripping,” (NPR), in which workers strip the leaves off of the vines as a means of getting more sun exposure to the grapes, and it also makes harvesting and separating the grapes from the vine easier. However, with an increase in temperature and UV exposure, the leaves need to stay on to protect the grapes, thus making the harvesting process even more tedious. 

Vineyard workers have to also consider other extreme conditions that occur besides the heat. Rainstorms are becoming heavier and longer, along with spells of cold weather and drastic temperature drops, which are causing the unexpected worry of hailstorms.

“In the past couple of years, some chateaux have been banding together to fight the increasing frequency of hailstones. We’re now hooked up to radar systems that let us know when a hailstone-charged cloud is approaching. So we launch some helium balloons together, and on those balloons we attach hygroscopic salt. The balloon is sucked into the storm cloud and the hygroscopic salt burns, transforming the hail into rain,” says Vine-master Nicolas Poumeyrau to NPR.

Vine-masters all around France are also pulling their focus more on the grapes that can withstand more extreme temperatures and changing their watering patterns to favor the vines that are stronger. They’re also attempting to infuse more irrigation systems among the vineyards to ensure all plants are hydrated consistently. Additionally, this past July the French wine governing body, the INAO (Institute National de l’Origine et de la Qualité), approved the use of seven new grapes for certain categories of Bordeaux wines specifically, one of the most lucrative wines that is exported from France, (NPR).