How Climate Change Could Affect the BC Wine Industry By Gary Symons In the past, farmers spent their time talking about the weather. Today, they talk about the climate. The difference is that, in what now seems like the distant past, the Earth’s climate was considered generally stable and unchanging, while the weather was changing all the time. The past 20 years has changed all that, starting in BC with the wildfires in 2003 that first raised wide concerns about smoke taint. Flash forward to 2022, in the wake of a terrible year of floods, wildfires, and the record setting heat dome that killed 595 people, and scientists now know the climate is changing rapidly, with unpredictable results. Elizabeth Wolkovich, associate professor of Forest and Conservation Sciences at UBC, is studying how global warming will affect wineries and grape growers, with a focus on the Okanagan Valley and regions of California. “The grapes used in wine are very sensitive to changes in the weather, which is part of what makes wine so interesting,” Wolkovich says. “But, that means grapes are also sensitive to long-term climate changes.” Work by Wolkovich and many other scientists has confirmed that grape growers face an uncertain future that will bring grave challenges and large opportunities. On the one hand, global warming could decrease the risk of frost events, and open up new areas in BC for the planting of vineyards. Those vineyards could be both higher in elevation, or further north. But on the other hand, climate change has
also been found to cause more extreme weather events, which can be catastrophic for farmers.
centuries, Bordeaux winemakers are now adding more climate-resistant varietals as acceptable for use in Bordeaux wines.
BC is grappling with exactly that this year, as blueberry farmers lost thousands of acres of crops due to flooding; grape growers and others have lost crops due to a record cold snap in December; and much of the province was affected by the heat dome and devastating wildfires.
Then, in 2021, most French wine regions were slammed by an unprecedented frost event, resulting in the smallest harvest since 1957 and resulting in $2 billion USD in losses.
“The overall average looks better for areas of northern wine growing regions like BC, because they’ve generally been limited by temperatures that were too cool, especially in the winter,” Wolkovich explains. “But the thing that impacts vine death in the winter is a single low in the winter, a single daily temperature that’s ultra low, and I think that is a really difficult thing to predict exactly.
Looking globally, several studies published in the National Academy of Sciences suggest the shift of warmer temperatures toward the north and south - or ‘poleward’ - will lead to a ““huge shake-up in the geographic distribution of wine production (Lallanilla, 2013)” in the next half century (Hannah et al., 2013).
“So, in the next 10 to 20 years it feels like the market forces are driving an expansion of the wine region, but certainly, these events that pop up, like that big frost event in Kelowna this year, that gives people pause.”
“The practical and economic impact would be monumental,” the report states, causing premium wine producing regions to shift poleward. “Many quality wine growing regions now on the margin for secure wine production will become safe and other regions will be able to expand their grape selection … (but) some areas would cease production all together.”
The Okanagan is hardly alone in this, and around the world data is accumulating that suggests wine regions are becoming generally warmer, but are facing much more extreme weather events.
In fact, one dire prediction states that by 2100, the United States could lose up to 81% of its premium wine grape acreage, among them vineyards in Napa, Sonoma, and Barbara counties.
In France, for example, grapes are now being harvested two weeks earlier than historical norms, and in 2020 the nation had its earliest harvest in history.
Many of those same studies indicate that in the west, including BC, Oregon and Washington, “the lift in temperatures could dictate that same shift to warmer grape varieties, as well. This could prove to be a boon to those regions and wine production.”
However, the increased warmth is also making certain varietals increasingly untenable, including the Merlot that is a mainstay of Bordeaux-style wines. For the first time in
Again, the research about global warming points to a good news vs. bad news scenario. Spring 2022
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