2012 has been a good year for South Australian wines the weather conditions have been perfect for the production of high quality grapes and high quality wine. After successive bad years the Australian wine industry deserves some luck. The good year in Australia has been counter balanced by poor growing conditions in Northern France especially in the Champagne region.
In Champagne the growers have been beset with all sorts of difficulties with late frosts in April and heavy rain for most of late spring and early summer. The poor weather conditions have caused coulure when the vine flowers fail to to set and pollinate properly. Vines are self pollinating plants which need dry and breezy conditions for the pollen to spread properly amongst the vines. The flowers in Champagne did not all pollinate at the same time so the vines fruited at different times which adds to difficulties to tending the fruit and harvesting it. The poor weather conditions also caused millerandage where the fruit fails to develop properly. The cold wet weather did not help the fruiting bodies of the vines.
To add to all this the vines were afflicted by both powdery mildew and (Oidium) and downy mildew (Peronospera). The treatments applied by the growers were washed off the grapes by the incessant downpours.
The good weather conditions in Australia and poor ones in Champagne cannot just be blamed on luck.
There is no doubt in my mind that man made climate change is altering the weather. This has been predicted by climate scientists who not only use climate models to predict the changes to the climate but who have also researched the climate of the past to make predictions. The greater extremes of weather events and the greater variability of the weather is caused by global warming which has increased the average temperature of the atmosphere and the amount of water vapour in the air. There is more energy in the atmosphere to disrupt normal weather patterns. As we pump more and more carbon di-oxide into the atmosphere the likelihood of us experiencing extreme weather will increase. Some years vine growers will benefit but overall I expect that climate change will create more and more serious problems not just for viticulture but for all forms of agriculture. We are damaging the atmosphere and we shall also damage the quality of our most preferred beverage. How stupid is that?
