ZOMGwereallgonnadrink!

Good news! Climate change means better wine, with a higher alcohol content. From the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Chapter 1, "The consequences of warming are already detectable in wine quality, as shown by Duchêne and Schneider (2005), with a gradual increase in the potential alcohol levels at harvest for Riesling in Alsace of nearly 2% volume in the last 30 years. On a worldwide scale, for 25 of the 30 analysed regions, increasing trends of vintage ratings (average rise of 13.3 points on a 100-point scale for every 1°C warmer during the growing season), with lower vintage-to-vintage variation, has been established (Jones, 2005)."