How Our Champagne Might Change

Making champagne is more art than science. Annually dealing with grapes that are never precisely the same, cellar masters try to retain a “house-style.”

Now, with global warming, champagne makers have a tougher task.

Champagne Harvests

Perrier-Jouët’s taster says global warming has changed her champagne. Because temperatures are up, champagne harvests had to move earlier. Otherwise, reducing acidity and elevating alcohol and sugar levels, the grape ripens too quickly.

And recipes have to change:

What we call champagne is determined by an appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC). Controlled by a French trade group, the AOC determines where and how champagne can be made. (For that reason California’s champagne is called “sparkling wine.):

About more than tweaking a bubbly recipe, warmer temperatures could shift growing areas. While experts say that rising temperatures will moderately affect the grapes that grow in the Champagne area, it is also possible that Denmark, Hungary, Japan and even England could soon have a more welcoming growing season.

Our Bottom Line: Temperature History

Stepping back, we can look at temperatures far beyond Champagne. In one of the most up-to-date estimates of global temperature history, scientists used 150,000 fossil specimens and multiple state-of-the-art climate models. More dynamic and extreme than they envisioned, the earth’s average temperature could have been as hot as 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit and as cool as 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Indeed, they hypothesize that, with average temperatures touching 86 degrees Fahrenheit, the earth was rather like a hothouse 485 million years ago. After that, during the next 30 million years, propelled downward by the release of atmospheric carbon dioxide, average temperatures plunged to 18 degrees Fahrenheit. Then, what we might call climate whiplash, 251 million years ago, we got warmer again.

So, when we try to insert current conditions within a multi-million-year frame, where does that leave us? According to one scientist, “In the same way as a massive asteroid hitting the Earth, what we’re doing now is unprecedented:”

It also leaves us with grapes that overripen in “the coldest period ever recorded.”

My sources and more: This is the Washington Post article that totally grabbed me. From there, Bloomberg (ungated) had the perfect complement.