Part of the fine selection of wines in the Ritz cellar which includes a supply of the best French vintages. (Photo : Getty Images/Keystone)
French wine might get ruined soon due to the climate change the world is experiencing right now. Researchers have suggested drinking all of it now before it gets spoiled.
Elizabeth Wolkovich, assistant professor of organismic and evolutionary biology, has said that French vintners have produced a lot of good grape wine due to climate change. If the temperature will go higher, however, the good wine will soon be ruined, EurekAlert reported.
In a recent study, the researchers from Harvard and NASA have suggested that the current global warming situation is making early harvests of wine grapes from France more frequent. These harvests result in higher quality wines where the grapes have just the best balance of sugar and acid.
Wolkovich said that the harvest dates of the grapes are getting much earlier and it points to it being connected to climate change. To get their conclusions, she and her team examined over 500 years of French harvest records. A major turning point for temperatures in the northern hemisphere was in 1980 and the research team saw that the harvest dates across France is getting earlier, she added.
Benjamin Cook, a climate scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said that thanks to climate change, the grape growers do not need the drought to get the necessary warm temperatures to harvest grapes for French wine. He also added that it is a "fundamental shift in the large-scale climate under which other, local factors operate."
The heat, for now, has brought out some "grands millesimes," which is a French term for great vintages, Discovery reported. France has temperatures warmed by about 1.5 degrees Celsius over the 20th century and it is still rising.
Pinot noir in Burgundy and Merlot in Bordeaux, which are signature grape varietals in France will no longer be as well-adapted. Certain French wines like Champagne, Sauternes, Margaux and Saint-Emilion is only grown in authorized areas and also according to the rules about which grape varieties can be used. So for the winemakers, if the rules are changed, it will also change the identity of the wine.
Check out the wines regions of Bordeaux video below:
