Discounted Bordeaux

by Sydney Perkins

Like many people, I come home Friday evening after a stressful week, and I do NOT settle down with a glass of wine to help me relax (because I am under 21). But if you are over 21, you may enjoy a glass of wine after a tiring week at work. What type of wine do you enjoy? Maybe a dry white or a full-bodied red. There are wines to fit every palate. If your taste happens to be high-end vintage Bordeaux wines, you may be in luck.

The most expensive Bordeaux wine is the Chateau Haut-Brion Blanc, Pessac-Leognan, France, at $911. For the majority of people, that is way out of their price range. You can now buy top-tier Bordeaux wine at the discounted price of $350-$500 or the 2nd tier at $100-$175 (as long as you are over 21). A combination of climate change, changing markets, and Covid-19 has caused this price to drop. Climate change is changing the wine game for grape growers, winemakers, and even wine consumers worldwide.

Thanks to the Earth's changing climate, farmers are now able to grow grapevines in places that they never thought they would be able to. For example, England's notoriously cold weather makes it unsuitable for growing grapes. Now that the summers and winters are getting hotter, the climate allows for grape growing. English bubbly wine is being produced in places like Kent, East and West Sussex, and Hampshire, creating a new viticulture market.

Some places have the chance to start creating wine, but other sites are now able to create different wines and grow different grapes. Areas such as Burgundy, Barolo, Champagne, and Rhine Valleys, who rarely produced lovely vintage wines, have a new chance at providing them. Bordeaux and Napa Valley, traditionally associated with cabernet sauvignon, are trying out seven fresh grapes (four red and three white) to test whether they can minimize the damage caused by climate change. In a way, grapes are globalizing.

But climate change isn't only set on benefiting wine growers but also making it harder. Because of climate change, the weather is more violent and unpredictable. In places like Barolo, Italy, there is new moisture to the summers, causing vine pests to reproduce faster. Oppositely, in places like California and Australia where water is scarce, farmers have to think of new strategies to get water to their orchards. Along with drought, forest and bush fires start more frequently, and researchers are now observing how smoke taints the grapes and wine. In Burgundy, there are even hail storms damaging the vines.

These climate changes that were once rare are becoming a regular problem for growers and even wine. Researchers predict that eventually, the temperatures will become too hot, and wines will become completely different from what we know and will be reduced to a cheap commodity. And unfortunately, farther into the future, growing grapes will become impossible.

Growing grapes, producing wine, buying wine, and tasting wine are all intricate processes. Adding in the factor of climate change makes these processes even more complicated.

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Sydney P.

Generation-E

Sources: 

https://www.economist.com/podcasts/2020/07/03/until-this-week-he-never-voted-on-the-pro-choice-side-of-an-abortion-decision-americas-chief-justice

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/14/dining/drinks/climate-change-wine.html