(Robohub) - With warmer winters and drier summers, climate change might even be having an effect on your favourite bottle of wine.

Winemakers are already witnessing changes. In France, the Burgundy region had its driest July in 66 years in 2015, while Italian producers are planting different grape varieties due to more intense summers.

‘The main problems, I think, are related to quality,’ said Dr Anne-Françoise Adam-Blondon of the National Institute for Agricultural Research, France. ‘The growers are struggling a little bit to keep their product stable in quantity and quality.’

The Issue

Droughts, flood, changing agriculture and rising sea levels – climate change is going to affect every aspect of our lives.

Many researchers believe that some countries will see their social fabric disintegrate as global warming leads to rising inequality and mass migrations.

A key challenge is to anticipate the effects of climate change and adapt our societies accordingly, a topic that will be under discussion at the Adaptation Futures conference in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, from 10 to 13 May.

When extra heat and sunlight boosts the amount of sugar the plant puts into grapes, the wine’s alcohol content can rise above the ideal 12 to 14 % range during fermentation she explains.

It also means that the sugar content develops faster than the polyphenol chemicals that give wines their taste. ‘By stimulating the increase in sugar while the content in polyphenol aromas is not quite mature, you have a lot of sugar very early and the rest of the components are not quite there,’ she said.

To better understand these risks, Dr Adam-Blondon leads the EU-funded INNOVINE project to maintain the high standard of European wine in the growing constraints of climate change.