Late Frost Bad News for the Wine Harvest

 This year's late frosts have done severe damage to the vines in France. The damage is so severe that government assistance will be required. One severe weather event cannot be attributed to climate change and global warming, but climate scientists have been warning us for years that global warming not only affects rainfall with increasing temperatures, but it also causes unexpected fluctuations to the weather. It is quite possible that winters could become colder and wetter and summers could become warmer and drier. All sorts of unexpected variations are possible within the range of average global temperatures going up. What happens now, if this year the wine growers of France and other European areas experience severe heat and drought in summer? They could have a disaster on their hands, and a run of 4 or 5 bad growing seasons could ruin the wine industry. 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/09/french-winemakers-frost-government-freezing-temperatures-crops-vines

It is not just France that has been affected, as many UK vineyards have been badly damaged too. Can UK growers expect generous government subsidies too? I shall leave you to answer that one.

https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2020/05/uk-vineyards-grapple-with-late-frost/

The Northern vineyards of Italy have also had their frost problems.

https://www.winespectator.com/articles/frost-strikes-vineyards-in-leading-italian-wine-region

Climat change needs to be tackled urgently, wine lovers do not want to taste wine that stems from grapes being grown under cloches or irrigated or artificially heated. Vines need nature; we can nurture the grapes but in the final analysis the vines need an equitable climate. Poorly grown grapes will produce poor wines.

It is ironic that research is being done to see how wines mature in space. What next, will research be done to see how grapes will grow without gravity and without weight to stretch the roots and the vine canes. Are some wine growers foreseeing a future where man leaves the planet Earth to inhabit Mars complete with his agriculture? This is a  pie in the sky future. It might be best to look after our own planet first  and reverse the damage of man made climate change. Let healthy vines produce healthy grapes and healthy wine.

Outer space wine

 Some samples of Bordeaux wine were sent up into space to age  for 14 months in the space station and then returned to earth for sensorial tasting by wine experts. The wine was the super expensive Chateau Petrus.

The wine experts noticed differences in taste between the "outer space aged wine" and the earthling wine. 

https://www.decanter.com/wine-news/petrus-wine-space-research-project-455239/

Of course the wine experts noticed differences but where they able to definitely able to identify the wine which had been aged in space from the earth based wine. How was the tasting organised? Was it a peer reviewed double blind experiment? How many samples of wine were tasted by how many tasters and were the results analysed by a statistician?

The power of suggestion can influence the results of a tasting all too easily it is very much a subjective exercise.

It concerns me that some wine entrepreneurs will see the profit potential from selling wine that has been "aged" in space to wine investors.

One of the tasters believed that the wine aged in space was "two to three years more " evolved. According to time dilation theory, astronauts who have spent months of time orbiting at high speeds in the space station return to earth younger than if they had remained on earth, albeit by milliseconds. Why is wine so different in this aspect?

https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/12/07/65014/how-does-time-dilation-affect-aging-during-high-speed-space-travel/