In a special issue of the Journal of Wine Research, academics and commercial researchers join forces to comment on past, present and future research into climate change and its implications for the wine industry.
Together, in the words of the guest editors Gregory V. Jones and Leanne Webb, they identify the challenges facing the wine industry and provide perspectives on the physical basis for climate’s influence, vulnerabilities of differing sectors of the industry, and available mitigative and adaptive strategies.’ Current literature is comprehensively reviewed and case studies from both the old and the new worlds assessed.
Predictions and warnings for the industry are made – with caution but also with firmness:
‘It is the present warm to hot vineyard regions of the world which will suffer most in a warming world. I would join many others in arguing that the present varieties grown in the majority of the world’s hot regions are now inappropriate:’
Richard Smart
‘:much less is known about the vulnerability of viticulture and viniculture as a sector to conditions beyond temperature and climate; about the adaptive capacity of the wine industry; and about adaptive management strategies.’
Tara Holland and Barry Smit
The contributors also encourage the wine industry to look at the advantages of taking an active approach to research and development – to be proactive in assessing the impacts, to invest in appropriate plant breeding and genetic research, to be ready to adopt suitable adaptation strategies, to be willing to alter varieties and management practices or controls, or to minimize wine quality differences by developing new technologies’.
Journal Of Wine Research
Special Issue on Climate change and the wine industry
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g931513316
Available now in print or online.
Posted on 04/23/11 by Lauren
