Festive revellers can now raise a glass to climate change

For those buying their Christmas wines they can now get their bottles of vintage grape from nearer to home – thanks to climate change.

Midlands green energy expert Ron Fox said the UK was becoming more and more suitable for wine growing with Sussex and Kent leading the way. Land covered by vineyards in Great Britain has increased fivefold from between 2004 and 2021.

Already global warming has made wine more alcoholic and sweeter with harvests happening up to three weeks earlier than 40 years ago.

A study published in the journal, Nature Reviews Earth & Environment said that if world temperature rises were held at under 2C – they are already at 1.1C – around a quarter of today’s wine growing regions could benefit, such as the UK.

But the experts warned that if the world temperatures increased by more than 2C, 70 per cent of the vineyards could then become unsuitable for producing grapes, especially in coastal and low-lying areas of Spain, Italy, Greece and southern California because of longer droughts and bigger heatwaves. However, new growing regions could open up with the UK’s flourishing wine industry expected to expand.

Ron said that with climate change British drinkers might need to embrace lesser-known grape varieties that can cope better with the hotter weather, such as grenache and monastrell rather than merlot and chardonnay which don’t like a warmer and drier climate and are more reliant on irrigation. This could become more of a problem if water became scarcer and it was prioritised for drinking and growing food crops rather than watering vineyards.

But chenin blanc was one drought resistant white wine while mourvedre was a red variety better adapted to a hotter world future.

However, Ron pointed out that more than half of the world’s vineyards are planted with just 12 varieties of grape, even though there are thousands of more types available.

Already champagne producers in France are adapting to a warmer world weather. For the first time in 90 years, they are changing the way they are creating bottles of bubbly.

Since the 1930s a bottle of champagne has been allowed by law to contain seven grape varieties: chardonnay, pinot noir, pinot meunier, and the rarer arbane, petit meslier, pinot blanc and pinot gris. Now an eighth has been added to the list. Voltis is one of a new generation of hybrid vines, developed to resist fungal diseases and is better suited as the world climate changes.

“The problem,” said Ron Fox, of Noreus Ltd on the University of Keele Science Innovation Park, “is that climate change could make growing grapes an increasingly riskier business, even in Britain, with freak weather bringing late spring frosts, summer droughts, hailstorms and torrential rain at harvest time.”

He added: “If you want any green energy advice, contact me call Ron on 0845 474 6641  – but do have a happy Christmas and enjoy a glass of wine.”

Caption: Cheers! Climate change is even affecting the wine industry.