What is going to happen to Bordeaux as a fine wine region as the planet heats up?
Opinions are divided. Michel Rolland and Jacques Lurton, by and large, have seen the warmer climate in recent years as being largely beneficial to Bordeaux - longer growing seasons, riper grapes, rounder and fuller resulting wines.
And by and large, according to canopy management expert (and brilliant speaker) Richard Smart, existing cool regions will do best, if they can accept that their international reputation will have to change as variety-suitability changes.
And that surely will be the sticking point for Bordeaux. In fact all of France - will the bureaucracy and tight regulations overseeing everything from yield to grape variety, move quickly enough to keep uo with the inevitable march of the changing climate?
In terms of more concrete changes - we already know that harvests are getting earlier (average two weeks earlier than 10 years ago), and alcohol levels are rising. A few interesting questions: will today's sought after terroirs (the 'hot' gravelly terroirs of the Left Bank) give way to cooler clay climates of the Right Bank? Will merlot survive, given its propensity to over-ripen quickly? Will the old 'forgotten' Bordeaux grape varieties, such as Malbec and Carmanere, make a come-back here as they are better adapted to hot climates? Certainly Petit Verdot will do well out of longer growing seasons.
And is this going to show that varietal labelling, so popular in recent years, has been a mistake, as consumers are going to have to get used to new varieties - and winemakers who stick to regional, rather than varietal, labels, will have an easier tine of it??
