To be sure, there will be winners among the wine industry as weather shifts. “This is not only their livelihood, but their heritage.” “Not only is the availability and pricing of wine at stake here, but it’s the culture and history of these wine-growing regions,” says Sean McIlwain, fine wine specialist and Champagne buyer at New York City-based Chambers Street Wines. The same is true for France’s Burgundy region, California’s Napa Valley, Northwestern Italy, or any of the top wine-growing regions in the world. If the hot weather makes the Bordeaux region no longer hospitable for the Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot grapes that thrive there, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of investment could be imperiled. Grape vines take a few years to mature, and often produce wine grapes for decades. Weather change is a game changer for the wine industry. has dropped from 841 million gallons in 2013 to 773 million gallons last year. Amid frequent wildfires and persistent drought, wine production in the U.S. Things are equally unsettled across the Atlantic. Now, they are usually picked in August so they won’t become overripe because of the heat. Grapes used to be picked in mid-September. Growers in Burgundy have been moving up their harvest because of warmer temperatures. In the Alsace region of France, Amélie and Charles Sparr are planting varieties of grapes that aren’t traditionally grown there to make interesting wine amid hotter temperatures. Michele Peters, the French portfolio manager at New York City-based David Bowler Wines, is working with growers scrambling to adapt. The country’s wine exports-at a record $17.6 billion last year-are likely to suffer if the extreme weather persists. Last year, French winemakers had their smallest harvest since 1945 thanks to devastating spring frost and summer drought. Many places have suffered from drought during the summer-and when the rain finally came, it arrived as battering hail storms. The unusually warm spells in March caused early budding of the vines, leaving them vulnerable to a wave of late frost in April. Heat waves and fires are only the latest weather challenges for winegrowers in Europe. “We are having longer and more intense heat waves in pretty much most of the major regions in the world.” Gregory Jones, a climatologist and chief executive of Abacela Winery in Oregon. “It’s definitely concerning, heat waves have been with us for a long time, but it’s clear that climate change has super charged,” says Dr.

Weather last year