(ScientificAmerican) - South Africa, Argentina, Australia and New Zealand export their wines all over the world, a feat that was unthinkable here a few decades ago. Fatalists claim it won't be long until there will be more produced in China than in Europe. To some observers, these prognostications illustrate the wide-ranging adaptive capacity of the wine grape, Vitis vinifera.

To others, particularly those whose reputations and businesses are at stake, changes to worldwide wine production patterns are unthinkable. Add incursions of grape growing into wilderness habitats of endangered species, and green groups get upset.

A study published in April in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) started this debate by projecting that a warming climate would render many of the traditional European wine-growing areas unsuitable for wine production by 2050.