Change in climate may transform wine taste

Boston: Climate change may cause popular wines to taste different, forcing winemakers to plant lesser— known grape varieties to counteract some of the effects of global warming.

Scientists and vintners need to better understand the wide diversity of grapes and their adaptions to different climates, according to Elizabeth Wolkovich, assistant professor at Harvard University in the US.

“It’s going to be very hard for many regions to continue growing the exact varieties they’ve grown in the past,” Wolkovich said.

“The Old World has a huge diversity of winegrapes — there are over planted 1,000 varieties — and some of them are better adapted to hotter climates and have higher drought tolerance than the 12 varieties now making up over 80 per cent of the wine market in many countries,” she said.

“We should be studying and exploring these varieties to prepare for climate change,” she added.

Convincing wine producers to try different grape varieties is difficult at best, and the reason often comes down to the current concept of terroir — the notion that a wine’s flavour is a reflection of where, which and how the grapes were grown.

As currently understood, only certain traditional or existing varieties are part of each terroir, leaving little room for change.

Even if winemakers were open to switching to new varieties, researchers do not have enough data to say whether other varieties would be able to adapt to climate change.