(ModernFarmer) - A new study finds that climate change is actually producing an effect prized by vintners: an early harvest.

The study, led by Assistant Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Elizabeth Wolkovich and published in the journal Nature Climate Change, finds that vineyards across France are harvesting, on average, two weeks earlier than the historical average. Though the study didn’t include this, France isn’t alone in the early-harvest trend; Napa Valley, in California, has also been scoring early harvests lately.

Grapes, like some other fruits, actually respond well to stress. When times are tough for the grapevine, the plant tends to produce fewer and smaller grapes, but with much more sugar—hoping that seed distributors like birds and other animals will devour the extra-delicious fruits and spread seeds despite the hardship. This is pretty well-understood; vintners know that a dry and hot year tends to produce less, but better, wine. In that kind of year, the harvest is also earlier. (And some winemakers in the West prefer dry-farming wine regardless.)

Grapes maturing earlier, and thus forcing an earlier harvest, is a good sign for wine quality. For one thing, it minimizes all the horrible things that can go wrong with a grape harvest: weird bouts of weather, freezing, burning, mold, diseases, pests, or whatever else. If the process is shortened, there’s less time for all that stuff to ruin a harvest. So grape growers love early droughts and hot weather: It means not only better wine, but a more guaranteed decent harvest, even though it’ll likely be smaller. You can see in this Wine Cellar Insider post just how many great vintages there have been in the past ten years.