Hurricanes, Fires, and Wine
This issue was published on August 23, 2023.
Happy Wine Wednesday!
In light of the rare hurricane that (sort of) swept through Los Angeles over the weekend and the devastating fires in Maui and eastern Canada recently, I want to resurface one of our very first issues that talked about how climate change is impacting winemaking (and, therefore, wine drinking).
Then, I’ll be bringing back another previous conversation with Heidi Moore, a wine insurance specialist in Oregon. I’ve specifically picked out the part of the interview where she talked about how climate change is affecting the wineries she works with.If you’re looking for ways to help those in Maui, you can find a list of resources and reputable organizations to donate to here.
Okay, let’s pour ourselves a glass and get our wine nerd on.
Climate Change and Vineyards
Hurricanes, Droughts, Fires, and Wine
I don’t need to tell you about how climate change is affecting us. It feels like every headline is talking about how climate change is the reason for increased fires, how it's part of the reason for California’s first tropical storm in decades, or how each month this summer has been the world’s hottest month on record.
Instead, let’s focus on how climate change is both good and bad (...but mostly bad) for our wines.
Image by Jim Wilson of grapes burnt in a fire in St. Helena, CA. Courtesy of the New York Times
Wine grapes are super sensitive. Like, even more sensitive than your fussiest houseplant. Unfortunately, this means that climate change is having a serious effect on the health of grape vines, the winemaking process, and ultimately, the taste in your wine.
After combing through 664 years of weather conditions and harvest dates, scientists found that wine grapes are now harvested an average of 13 days earlier than they were before 1988 (published in the European Geosciences Union journal Climate of the Past). Now, warmer temperatures aren't necessarily all bad. Regions that used to be too cool for wine production can now start making higher quality wines more consistently.
Areas like Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Germany have been able to take advantage of warmer vintages (especially 2019) and create higher quality wine as their grapes soak up the sun and ripen more easily. Belgium was able to quadruple their wine production between 2006 and 2018, and even a typically gloomy England has become part of the fine wine scene, along with the Netherlands and Sweden (maybe IKEA will start serving wine with their meatballs).
Here’s where warmer temperatures are bad for the future of wine.
You could probably guess that heatwaves and less water means struggling vines. While riper grapes might be good for some varietals and emerging regions, other winemakers in established and traditional regions worry that it’s making their wines fruitier and richer than desired. A grape that ripens too quickly can’t properly develop key characteristics like tannins (which affect texture, mouthfeel, and bitterness) and anthocyanins (which give grape skins their color). It can also mean less acids and more alcohol levels in the resulting wine. Just like us, grapes that spend too much time in the sun can also get sunburnt and experience other damage. This is already happening in some areas such as Southern Australia, which saw an 8% loss in their overall white wine varieties including a 12% drop in chardonnay.
Photo by Kent Nishimura of firefighters working to contain the Glass Fire in Napa in September, 2020. Courtesy of Getty Images.
Other negative effects of climate change include less frequent but potentially more severe winter freezes, less winter frosts and a shorter winter which encourage more pests, changes in rainfall patterns resulting in conditions that are too damp or too dry, changes in soil quality, and rising sea levels which might change coastlines and affect winemakers nearby. Increased flooding and wildfires can also devastate vineyards and resulting smoke can taint the taste of the wine, while the drought and decreased water levels continue to impact agriculture and people overall. Winemakers are responding by combating these effects in different ways, including moving their vineyards, experimenting with warmer weather grapes, and using technology to help with the changing harvesting and winemaking process.
What does this mean for us, the wine drinker, in the future?
A traditionally elegant pinot noir from a cooler climate starts to taste like a fruit-driven, warmer climate pinot. Your favorite winery moves further north. A winemaker abandons a cooler weather varietal to grow a heartier grape that can survive a hot summer. Strict Old World wine laws change to accommodate new plantings. Your go-to wine bar starts serving wines from…England. And the worst: decreased production of wine overall. In fact, some researchers believe that rising temperatures will decrease the production of wine grapes in some areas by about 50% by the late 21st century.
Look, I don’t need to sugar coat this: climate change is bad.
The earth is getting hotter, winters are getting colder, and storms are getting worse. But it’s not all bad! Regions around the world are producing wine that we never thought possible even twenty years ago. So while you’re lamenting our planet burning while global leaders stand idly by, find some solace in a new varietal from an unexpected region. You might find a new favorite!
I’d also encourage you to open a bottle of something traditional, enjoy it in its current form, and invite your friends over to have a glass and discuss ways to motivate corporations and lawmakers to move quickly to save our planet (and wine).
Heidi Moore
Wine Insurance Specialist and Host of the "Wine Crush" Podcast
This interview has been edited for clarity and truncated for the newsletter.
Merobebe
What is wine insurance and how is that different from other commercial or farm insurance?
Heidi Moore
It's kind of all of the above. Wineries are a very specialty business. They're very niche. They have so many components that go into them, and there's a big difference between a winery that is also an estate vineyard, where there’s the farm component of it along with the vineyard, their home, their autos, and so on.
But then, you completely shift sides and you're now on a commercial policy with a product that's being manufactured and made. You have leakage, contamination, business income, employees – all these different things. Then you have the farm side where you're trying to help them with crop insurance. We had a smoke incident in 2020, so how does that fit in?
You're advising these clients – not just throwing their information against a wall and hoping that the policy you put together for them is actually going to protect them. I think I have one of the best policies in the industry. It has been very well crafted to where we're not leaving things out. Insurance is a very, very confusing business. You need to be able to speak the language. With the wineries, I understand the language, and I know what's in my policy and what's not in my policy.So the winery insurance is the winery, the wine, the bulk wine, equipment, the employees, the cars, the vehicles, the forklift – anything that goes into the wine business itself goes into that policy. Then the vineyard is a completely different animal.There's so much. And then there's a difference between a custom crush versus an estate versus an alternating proprietorship. And are they selling retail? Are they selling FOB or are they selling wholesale? You're trying to look at all these values and how they're actually valuing things, and also educating them at the same time on why, what, when and how.
Merobebe
You mentioned the smoke from all the fires in 2020. How has climate change been affecting your insurance policies or how your customers are approaching their insurance policies?
Heidi Moore
Up until 2020, about 10% of Oregon had crop insurance. On the flip side, Washington is 90% crop insurance and 10% not. Oregon has a climate that isn’t too extreme on one side or the other – not super hot or super cold, or smoke and fire or ice all the time. 2020 was a huge eye opener for people because we did have these wildfires that felt like the whole state was on fire.
And in the Willamette Valley, because of the way it's shaped – the fires were really close to the valley and so the smoke just hung there. I mean, it looked like the apocalypse here for about a week. You walk outside in the sunshine, but it's orange outside because you can't see through the smoke.
The difference is that we grow a lot of pinot noir up here, which is a very delicate grape. It's very hard to grow. It's not easy – like cab and cab franc and merlot, they’re hardier grapes that can take the abuse a little bit more. Pinot noir is not that way. It's very thin skinned. It absorbs a lot of that smoke, so depending on where that smoke hung, some of those berries tasted like ashtray – they were just just absolutely awful. So there was that awakening to, oh my God, yes, climate change is happening and these wildfires can happen more often.
There are definitely other changes happening with environmental warming and things like that. You're seeing grapes pushed out more towards the coast, which would have never happened a few years ago or 20 years ago. You're seeing these new areas kind of creep up because it's warmer now and they can get the fruit ripe.
Merobebe
That's so interesting. I hadn’t thought about how – because different grapes need different kinds of care – climate change would also affect varietals and regions differently.
Heidi Moore
Yeah. There has been a lot of crop insurance sold over the last two years because it does cover smoke and smoke taint, and it also covers fire in most respects.I think it was 2021 – we had a lot of winemakers and vineyard growers call it Satan’s Bubble. We had temperatures of 116 for like two days in a row! We just don't get that hot here. For us to get a couple hundred degree days during the summer is pretty rare, so for us to be at 116 and 112 was just completely mind blowing. And then this spring we had a really late, heavy frost. A lot of people were panicking because they were losing crops.
Get a wine-related movie or book pairing for your weekend.
Today’s pairing is the Wine Crush Podcast hosted by Heidi Moore
With five seasons out, Heidi talks to a different Willamette Valley winemaker in every episode of Wine Crush. Learning about each winemakers story, hearing about their farming, winemaking process, and their wines is what made Heidi fall in love with the industry. She even recently traveled to Idaho, so there are some special episodes featuring Idaho winemakers as well!
Listen to Wine Crush wherever you get your podcasts.
That’s all for today!
Don’t forget to learn more about how you can help Maui residents here.
I’ll be back in your inbox next Wednesday with a brand new sip of the day and woman in wine of the week!
Cheers,
Megumi