(Reuters) - It's a $200 billion industry that prides itself on being rooted to a particular spot and doing things they way they've always been done. But global warming is forcing the world's wine growers to change.

As a U.N. conference in Paris next week tries to limit climate change, wine makers from France to Australia are already changing their time-honoured methods, or even uprooting whole vineyards, as long-established weather patterns alter and the temperature rises.

Already, English sparkling white wine and even Nordic reds and whites have claimed shelf space in the specialist stores. But increasingly, many of the more traditional labels may begin to taste different as drier, hotter summers change the properties of their grapes.

Warmer temperatures ripen the grapes faster: the harvest in Bordeaux already takes place about 10 days earlier than in 1980; in Champagne, 15 days; and in Australia, eight.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 1983-2012 is likely to have been the warmest 30-year period of the last 1400 years in the Northern Hemisphere. And while global average temperatures rose 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.3 Fahrenheit) between 1850 and 1986, they are predicted to leap 0.5C in the next 20 years alone.

Faster growth tends to boost the grapes' sugar content, and therefore the alcohol level, and reduce the acidity.

This is generally good news in cool regions such as northern Europe, including Germany and the French regions of Champagne and Val de Loire, although it may subtly change the taste of their wines.

Southern England, the northernmost frontier for vineyards just a generation ago, has seen a rapid expansion since the 1980s thanks to its warmer summers, and especially since 2000, predominantly in sparkling wines that compete with Champagne.

"In some areas they have been making a similar kind of wine for hundreds of years, so I'm sure they will cope - but it is an opportunity for us in England to make a unique kind of wine," said Sam Lindo, chairman of the UK Vineyards Association.

NOT JUST POLAR BEARS

England has long since abdicated the 'northernmost' title. Warmer temperatures and new vines that can resist colder winters are bringing wine production into Nordic countries, although the risk of a soggy summer is still a high one there.

"There is this myth about the cold weather here, the moose and the polar bears," said Goran Amnegard, from the Blaxsta winery near the Swedish capital Stockholm, which sells as far afield as Hong Kong. "We have had more or less Mediterranean summers."

But many traditionally warmer regions could do without the extra heat.

Australian winemakers, for instance, are moving south to the island of Tasmania.

Average temperatures in Australia's main wine regions are projected to increase by between 0.3C and 1.7C by 2030, reducing grape quality by between 12 and 57 percent, according to the national science agency, CSIRO.