As the world warms due to climate change, winemakers are struggling to maintain the quality of their product. But in the home of wine, agroforestry researchers are showing that growing “vines among the pines” can help growers adapt. Higher average temperatures speed up the ripening of grapes, which leads to lower acidity and increased sugars in the fruit, yielding higher alcohol levels in wine and altering other compounds in grapes that affect aroma and flavor.
As the climate warms, this is becoming increasingly difficult and the best growing regions for many kinds of grapes are shifting northward toward the U.K., Germany and Sweden, in Europe’s case, and toward the Pacific Northwest from California in the U.S. Growers typically can’t move their vineyards, though, so some are opting to grow new grape varieties that are more tolerant to heat or drought.
A study that recently made headlines worldwide suggested the growing of such varieties of grapes to ensure the future of wine. But this requires winemakers to learn how to grow new kinds of grapes, and to therefore produce different styles of wine. While climate change adaptation of wine grapes may be the most exciting of the projects here, this is not the only research being undertaken: also noted in 2019 were durum wheat, alfalfa, and lush expanses of peas growing among rows of trees, the latter of which, despite artificial drought conditions introduced by Ph.D. researcher Guillaume Blanchet, were proven to yield better in the trees’ shade versus in the sun.
Source: Mongabay
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