New Wine Woes for France
In general, the French do not like change. So it is safe to assume that the French wine industry, pummeled as it has been of late, will not like the late breaking news about a looming change of major proportions, which in agricultural circles is affectionately called ‘climate change’.
Agence France Presse reports today, in an article in Seed, that because “a rise of one degree Celsius by 2035—as predicted by one United Nations model—would see winegrowing regions shift, on average, 180 kilometres (110 miles) northwards“, it looks like the best French wines will be cultivated, in 2025 at least, in lands that are 180 km x number of degrees C. of climate change toward the north.
According to my calculations, this puts New Burgundy somewhere near Manchester and New Bordeaux in London’s West End.
The French have had enough problems of late with the wine industry. Having decided over the last 25 years that the best approach to the threat of competition from ‘emerging’ wine-making countries like Australia, South Africa, Chile, etc, was to just ignore it, they now realize that this insouciance has led to major decline, mainly in the form of major lost major international market share.
And now there’s the real possibility that the nectar of the French gods will be grown in Kensington. Quelle catastrophe!
Another wrinkle, potentially worse, in my opinion, is going to be the dawning, when the Brits who moved to SW France to partake of the wonderful art de vivre, realize that the good wine is not down here but up there, ie, the place they left in the first place, to come down here. Will they then sell their chateaux down here to rebuy the 2-bedroom apartment that they had sold up there in the first place to be able to afford the chateau down here?
And what will that do to real estate prices down here? And up there? This is getting complicated, this global warming thing.
