[Applause]
well welcome thank you very much I’d
like to start today by asking those in
the audience do you enjoy wine good good
organizers will you make sure that every
single person with our hand up gets a
free bottle of wine when we get done
today just kidding my name’s Greg Jones
as the introduction said I’m here to
talk to you about climate grapes and
wine but first I’d like to back up and
talk about the importance of weather and
climate in human history we know that
early civilizations as they were
developing developed based upon strong
agricultural systems that had to do with
the climate being able to allow them to
grow a given crop if the climate change
for one reason or another historically
they migrated move somewhere else or
decided to grow something or raise a
different type of animal so climate has
been very important and today just like
in the past we know that climate
influences everything we do in
agriculture through controlling the
suitability of a crop to a given area
through influencing quality and
productivity and ultimately driving
economic sustainability anywhere in the
world when we talk about climate and
agriculture we can typically talk about
two broad categories broadacre crops or
specialty crops the idea here is is that
these crops divide the system into how
we see them geographically while
broadacre crops such as corn wheat rice
and soybeans grown across a very wide
geographic and therefore climatic range
specialty crops have a tendency to be
grown over fairly narrow geographic
areas and very narrow climate ranges
when I was a young PhD student starting
to look at studying climate and
climatology my advisers all suggested to
me to study broadacre crops because they
were very important for food security
however I was very much interested in
intricate and delicate nature of how
climate influence growing specialty
crops especially when I was looking at
something like viticulture and wine
production in this system arguably
climate is the most important factor to
growing the crop in making wine so as
such I went down this path to look at
the system some people asked me and they
said this is a pretty superfluous thing
to study alcohol but alcohol has been
with us for throughout history and has
helped shaped who we are and so I
thought that was a very interesting
aspect of something to study and wine
which which embodies all kinds of
characteristics associated with art and
history gastronomy Romanticism
science of all kinds it was all tied up
in this one agricultural pursuit for me
was just too rich of a system to not
study so that’s where I went down this
path to become a wine climatologist and
I always say that somebody had to do it
so I want to start here by talking about
something we’ve learned over time about
this term called terroir not terror but
terroir terroir is comes from the Latin
Terry or territory its first modern
definition is based upon a stretch of
land limited by its agricultural
capacity and within the concept of
terroir it typically is trying to
describe all of the factors that go into
growing grapes and making wine this
includes the variety in terms of how
it’s being grown but this also includes
all of the natural factors such as
climate landscape geology and soil that
go into growing grapes in making wine
however there’s a tremendous cultural
aspect to where cultural factors are
extremely important especially in in
terms of how we decide what variety goes
where and how those wines are being made
from the fruit grown in those vineyards
so the cultural component is extremely
important now up all the natural factors
that go into growing grapes making wine
it is pretty clear that climate is the
kind of the baseline expression that we
can all
kind of agree on and understand and I
think most of you as well in the
audience the the very baseline
expression here is the difference
between wine styles we can all tell a
wine that typically comes from a cool
climate or a warm climate at cool
climate wines tend to be lighter more
subtle they have a higher acidity very
crisp they tend to have bright fruit
flavors while wines that come from a
warmer terroir have a tends to be fuller
deeper colored higher alcohol and and
darker fruits so we all know that that
this wine style framework is really
being driven by climate what happens
with geology and soil is is that they
influence the overall subtle nature of
those expressions within a given region
or within a given vineyard so it all
plays an important role but climate is
the main driver here the other component
of this is is that that climate really
is a strong driver in quality and
productivity that happens within the
terroir framework of things so as I’ve
been looking at this terroir is an
important kind of construct that we use
to describe kind of what’s happening
within growing grapes and making wine so
this leads me to talk a little bit about
relationships when we look at the
overall framework of growing grapes in
making wine we know that it takes quite
a bit to be able to produce a given crop
for high quality we know we have to
understand this the the structure of the
climate in a given region what that
looks like in terms of growing season
length and and rainfall timing and
extreme events but we also need to know
how that structure drives the
suitability to any given variety grown
there but beyond structure and
suitability we also have to have a
framework behind which we can understand
how climate variability influences
quality and productivity but today more
than ever we also need to understand how
a changing climate influences all of
this whether it changes the structure in
a given region the suitability to
varieties and or the overall variability
in a region is all very very important
this is critical because wine grapes are
a narrow specialty crop that that are
really prone to changes in climate
overall so what I’ve been doing is
trying to study what these this
framework is
or one great production not only
globally but also here locally within
our region so this leads me to the idea
that some of you might say or be
thinking about right now the idea that
is there an ideal climate for wine
production well I’ve been trying to
study this for about 25 years or so now
and I think we know some things they’re
worth sharing number one I’ve been
looking at this concept behind what’s
called a climate niche a niche climate
niche is essentially the climatic
environment that any organism whether it
be a plant or an animal functions the
best in for wine grapes this basically
means if you plant the right grape in
the right place you’re going to get more
consistent quality and more consistent
productivity over the long term now as
we look at overall climate structures of
places worldwide we know that climate in
general is based upon what we all kind
of lead to believe these Mediterranean
climate structures out there in the
world and it’s mostly it’s true because
we have this history with Europe and we
look at these areas and we try to
understand what their framework is all
about but I can tell you that wine
grapes are today grown across average
huge range of mid-latitude zones that
are very suitable to growing quite a few
different varieties
matter of fact hundreds of varieties can
be grown across landscapes all over the
world to produce different wine cells
some of these places are more suitable
to cooler climate varieties some of them
are more suitable to warmer climate
varieties but their overall framework
here is is that there’s a rich amount of
varietal material that can be grown in
different places throughout the world in
terms of what we can produce so a lot of
this has led me to studying these
aspects of these climate niches and
trying to better understand what variety
does best where and how and in doing so
that’s led me to this idea of
suitability how can we understand
suitability relative to any crop let
alone something as complex as growing
grapes and making wine I collected data
from places all over the world to try to
best better understand this
and in doing so I have worked up to a
diagram that’s very useful to illustrate
the concept here this diagram is a
representation of 21 of the most common
varieties grown worldwide you can pick
out your favor and what it is is it
represents the climate niche of these
varieties based upon where and how they
can be grown best throughout the world I
also have table grapes and raisins here
just to put an upper bound on the whole
framework of where the warmest areas are
for grapevines two different things are
being shown here and we’ll get to a
third in a moment but the two different
things are largely the climate type in
which these varieties can be grown in
weather it’s cool intermediate warmer
hot but also the potential wine style
and to describe that a little bit more I
want to talk about Pinot Noir most of
you probably know Oregon’s number one
variety is Pinot Noir well it can be
grown over a fairly narrow climb a niche
of about four degrees Fahrenheit
globally and in doing so on the cool end
we have places like Tasmania on the warm
and we have places like the Russian
River Valley and in the middle we have
places like burgundy and the Willamette
Valley what happens here is is that
Pinot Noir that’s grown on the cool end
tends to be a lighter bodied lighter
color more subtle wine while it’s grown
on the warmer and it tends to be a more
fuller Barty body darker color Pinot
Noir wine so that’s the wine style
potential that can happen in this
framework
and if you really think about it you
could describe the same thing for any
one of the varieties that’s on the list
another aspect of this I think is
important you might be saying well can
these varieties be grown outside these
bounds yes they can and people do it
however the climate is such that
unreliable yields typically are produced
and then quality tends to be more
questionable or sketchy and so it’s not
a very marketable product within these
bounds you tend to be more consistent
overall another way of looking at this
in terms of this diagram is to talk
about regions
I developed a concept just looking at
what I call the climatic envelope for a
given region so this is the essentially
the coolest – the warmest places in a
region and how it can ripen any variety
and we can
talk about a couple of places here’s
burgundy burgundy is a relatively cool
climate area and grows mostly Pinot Noir
and Chardonnay and you can see why it’s
climate envelope is basically central to
that we can also look at a warm climate
place like Bordeaux Bordeaux a little
bit again a little bit warmer it’s it
can ripen us at different range of
varieties and also produces a different
range of styles so that brings me to
talk about here we’re in the Umpqua
Valley of Oregon a very prominent wine
region in the state whereas its climate
niche and what does it look like well
it’s basically somewhat in the middle of
these two burgundy and Bordeaux and the
framework here is you should be able to
see right away that it’s wider
well it’s wider because the region of
the Umpqua valley is larger we also have
more elevational differences in
latitudinal differences so we have a
bigger climate envelope but we do
overlap we have some characteristic
climates that are very similar to
burgundy and some they’re a little
similar to Bordeaux as well so this
leads me to talk about climate change a
lot of well documented changes that have
happened out there in terms of climate
and climate controlled factors in wine
regions we know that growing seasons
have gotten warmer and longer you know
that winter periods have been warmer as
well the plants are telling us that
things are changing because they have
earlier bud break and flowering and
harvest we also know that ripening
characteristics or profiles have changed
we’ve been accumulating more sugar and
producing slightly higher alcohol wines
and therefore wine styles have changed
because of pests and diseases have
changed we’ve also seen some changes
overall in characteristics of soil
erosion and fertility but we’ve also
seen water resource changes where some
places have gotten drier and some places
have gotten wetter but let’s look at a
very basic change getting back to this
diagram that we’ve just been talking
about and put it into a framework of
trying to understand how changes in
climate influence not only how varieties
can be produced but how regions can
produce those varieties based upon their
climate envelope I’m gonna go back to
burgundy burgundy in the 1950s was
relatively cool cooler than it is today
and it was still able to produce Pinot
Noir and Chardonnay it’s two Markey
varieties but did it in a slightly
different wine style framework if you of
course fast forward to where we are
today you can see that that shift of a
couple of degrees is more central to
those two varieties and so therefore
allows it to be produced more
consistently if we look at conservative
estimates of warming in the future
burgundy will likely end up here the
climatic envelope will be on they warm
up or in for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay
it doesn’t remove them from the ability
to produce those wines but what it does
is it changes the wine style overall
framework that they can produce there if
we if we look at this though this is a
conservative projection of climate in
the future what happens if it changes to
more extremes that we kind of tend to
think might happen this would put
burgundy in a completely different
framework we’re only the coolest of
places can potentially ripen fruit in
the future and potentially there will be
other varieties that can be done there
how about if we go to where we are again
here in the Umpqua Valley and think
about it we go back to the 1950s in the
uncle eval II the climates were a little
cooler than they are today
the first pioneers that came here in the
1960s planted varieties that were more
so associated with that cooler climate
and did fairly well fast forward to
today this is our climate envelope we
still produce some of those cool climate
varieties but now we have shifted a
little bit and we’re producing other
varieties how about conservative warming
in the growing seasons of four to five
degrees Fahrenheit by 2050 this is what
our climate envelope would be like we
would to be shifting a little bit in
terms of what we can do but we’d also be
opening up potentially to new varieties
in terms of our overall productivity
capability so that leads me to the idea
of what does the future hold
well first we know that today climate is
warmer than any time in our recorded
past we also know that continued warming
is highly likely while climate change
has the ability to affect every single
agricultural pursuit the narrow zones of
one great production are
prone to climate change and so I’ve
provided us some good evidence of kind
of these type of impacts into a
specialty crop system so as we look
forward to the future we have to think a
little bit about kind of what this means
for the overall perspective of wine
grape growing we know that the past 50
years have benefited quality of wine
worldwide with some climate change but
our projections into the future have a
tendency to point to the idea that some
beneficial impacts will happen but will
likely have some detrimental impacts as
well I personally believe that Oregon
has plenty to gain from overall climate
change and I think that we’ll see some
of that our are warming in our cool to
intermediate climates will likely
produce a situation in which we have
increased viability for some varieties
but we can also potentially see new
varieties that we can grow
however our warm and dry summers are
projected to nothing to get nothing more
than warmer and drier and what that
might do is that might increase heat
stress and/or increase issues of water
resource demand so I think we have some
real important issues there I have a lot
of confidence in viticulture and wine
production to to address these issues
they already have in increasing their
sustainability and are constantly
looking to reduce their vulnerability
and increase their adaptive capacity in
the face of climate change they’re doing
this through looking at better plant
material how to better manage vineyards
but also how to take that fruit from the
vineyard into the winery and control
quality into the future all of that
being said I think all of us as wine
consumers need to be adaptable to change
them as well change is going to happen
whether it be changes in wine styles or
wine varieties this is just bound to
happen in all the wine regions in the
world if you are a true terroir wrist
and you love wine then embrace these
changes go out there and continually try
to find the best wine you can find from
the magic that is terroir thank you
[Applause]
well welcome thank you very much I’d
like to start today by asking those in
the audience do you enjoy wine good good
organizers will you make sure that every
single person with our hand up gets a
free bottle of wine when we get done
today just kidding my name’s Greg Jones
as the introduction said I’m here to
talk to you about climate grapes and
wine but first I’d like to back up and
talk about the importance of weather and
climate in human history we know that
early civilizations as they were
developing developed based upon strong
agricultural systems that had to do with
the climate being able to allow them to
grow a given crop if the climate change
for one reason or another historically
they migrated move somewhere else or
decided to grow something or raise a
different type of animal so climate has
been very important and today just like
in the past we know that climate
influences everything we do in
agriculture through controlling the
suitability of a crop to a given area
through influencing quality and
productivity and ultimately driving
economic sustainability anywhere in the
world when we talk about climate and
agriculture we can typically talk about
two broad categories broadacre crops or
specialty crops the idea here is is that
these crops divide the system into how
we see them geographically while
broadacre crops such as corn wheat rice
and soybeans grown across a very wide
geographic and therefore climatic range
specialty crops have a tendency to be
grown over fairly narrow geographic
areas and very narrow climate ranges
when I was a young PhD student starting
to look at studying climate and
climatology my advisers all suggested to
me to study broadacre crops because they
were very important for food security
however I was very much interested in
intricate and delicate nature of how
climate influence growing specialty
crops especially when I was looking at
something like viticulture and wine
production in this system arguably
climate is the most important factor to
growing the crop in making wine so as
such I went down this path to look at
the system some people asked me and they
said this is a pretty superfluous thing
to study alcohol but alcohol has been
with us for throughout history and has
helped shaped who we are and so I
thought that was a very interesting
aspect of something to study and wine
which which embodies all kinds of
characteristics associated with art and
history gastronomy Romanticism
science of all kinds it was all tied up
in this one agricultural pursuit for me
was just too rich of a system to not
study so that’s where I went down this
path to become a wine climatologist and
I always say that somebody had to do it
so I want to start here by talking about
something we’ve learned over time about
this term called terroir not terror but
terroir terroir is comes from the Latin
Terry or territory its first modern
definition is based upon a stretch of
land limited by its agricultural
capacity and within the concept of
terroir it typically is trying to
describe all of the factors that go into
growing grapes and making wine this
includes the variety in terms of how
it’s being grown but this also includes
all of the natural factors such as
climate landscape geology and soil that
go into growing grapes in making wine
however there’s a tremendous cultural
aspect to where cultural factors are
extremely important especially in in
terms of how we decide what variety goes
where and how those wines are being made
from the fruit grown in those vineyards
so the cultural component is extremely
important now up all the natural factors
that go into growing grapes making wine
it is pretty clear that climate is the
kind of the baseline expression that we
can all
kind of agree on and understand and I
think most of you as well in the
audience the the very baseline
expression here is the difference
between wine styles we can all tell a
wine that typically comes from a cool
climate or a warm climate at cool
climate wines tend to be lighter more
subtle they have a higher acidity very
crisp they tend to have bright fruit
flavors while wines that come from a
warmer terroir have a tends to be fuller
deeper colored higher alcohol and and
darker fruits so we all know that that
this wine style framework is really
being driven by climate what happens
with geology and soil is is that they
influence the overall subtle nature of
those expressions within a given region
or within a given vineyard so it all
plays an important role but climate is
the main driver here the other component
of this is is that that climate really
is a strong driver in quality and
productivity that happens within the
terroir framework of things so as I’ve
been looking at this terroir is an
important kind of construct that we use
to describe kind of what’s happening
within growing grapes and making wine so
this leads me to talk a little bit about
relationships when we look at the
overall framework of growing grapes in
making wine we know that it takes quite
a bit to be able to produce a given crop
for high quality we know we have to
understand this the the structure of the
climate in a given region what that
looks like in terms of growing season
length and and rainfall timing and
extreme events but we also need to know
how that structure drives the
suitability to any given variety grown
there but beyond structure and
suitability we also have to have a
framework behind which we can understand
how climate variability influences
quality and productivity but today more
than ever we also need to understand how
a changing climate influences all of
this whether it changes the structure in
a given region the suitability to
varieties and or the overall variability
in a region is all very very important
this is critical because wine grapes are
a narrow specialty crop that that are
really prone to changes in climate
overall so what I’ve been doing is
trying to study what these this
framework is
or one great production not only
globally but also here locally within
our region so this leads me to the idea
that some of you might say or be
thinking about right now the idea that
is there an ideal climate for wine
production well I’ve been trying to
study this for about 25 years or so now
and I think we know some things they’re
worth sharing number one I’ve been
looking at this concept behind what’s
called a climate niche a niche climate
niche is essentially the climatic
environment that any organism whether it
be a plant or an animal functions the
best in for wine grapes this basically
means if you plant the right grape in
the right place you’re going to get more
consistent quality and more consistent
productivity over the long term now as
we look at overall climate structures of
places worldwide we know that climate in
general is based upon what we all kind
of lead to believe these Mediterranean
climate structures out there in the
world and it’s mostly it’s true because
we have this history with Europe and we
look at these areas and we try to
understand what their framework is all
about but I can tell you that wine
grapes are today grown across average
huge range of mid-latitude zones that
are very suitable to growing quite a few
different varieties
matter of fact hundreds of varieties can
be grown across landscapes all over the
world to produce different wine cells
some of these places are more suitable
to cooler climate varieties some of them
are more suitable to warmer climate
varieties but their overall framework
here is is that there’s a rich amount of
varietal material that can be grown in
different places throughout the world in
terms of what we can produce so a lot of
this has led me to studying these
aspects of these climate niches and
trying to better understand what variety
does best where and how and in doing so
that’s led me to this idea of
suitability how can we understand
suitability relative to any crop let
alone something as complex as growing
grapes and making wine I collected data
from places all over the world to try to
best better understand this
and in doing so I have worked up to a
diagram that’s very useful to illustrate
the concept here this diagram is a
representation of 21 of the most common
varieties grown worldwide you can pick
out your favor and what it is is it
represents the climate niche of these
varieties based upon where and how they
can be grown best throughout the world I
also have table grapes and raisins here
just to put an upper bound on the whole
framework of where the warmest areas are
for grapevines two different things are
being shown here and we’ll get to a
third in a moment but the two different
things are largely the climate type in
which these varieties can be grown in
weather it’s cool intermediate warmer
hot but also the potential wine style
and to describe that a little bit more I
want to talk about Pinot Noir most of
you probably know Oregon’s number one
variety is Pinot Noir well it can be
grown over a fairly narrow climb a niche
of about four degrees Fahrenheit
globally and in doing so on the cool end
we have places like Tasmania on the warm
and we have places like the Russian
River Valley and in the middle we have
places like burgundy and the Willamette
Valley what happens here is is that
Pinot Noir that’s grown on the cool end
tends to be a lighter bodied lighter
color more subtle wine while it’s grown
on the warmer and it tends to be a more
fuller Barty body darker color Pinot
Noir wine so that’s the wine style
potential that can happen in this
framework
and if you really think about it you
could describe the same thing for any
one of the varieties that’s on the list
another aspect of this I think is
important you might be saying well can
these varieties be grown outside these
bounds yes they can and people do it
however the climate is such that
unreliable yields typically are produced
and then quality tends to be more
questionable or sketchy and so it’s not
a very marketable product within these
bounds you tend to be more consistent
overall another way of looking at this
in terms of this diagram is to talk
about regions
I developed a concept just looking at
what I call the climatic envelope for a
given region so this is the essentially
the coolest – the warmest places in a
region and how it can ripen any variety
and we can
talk about a couple of places here’s
burgundy burgundy is a relatively cool
climate area and grows mostly Pinot Noir
and Chardonnay and you can see why it’s
climate envelope is basically central to
that we can also look at a warm climate
place like Bordeaux Bordeaux a little
bit again a little bit warmer it’s it
can ripen us at different range of
varieties and also produces a different
range of styles so that brings me to
talk about here we’re in the Umpqua
Valley of Oregon a very prominent wine
region in the state whereas its climate
niche and what does it look like well
it’s basically somewhat in the middle of
these two burgundy and Bordeaux and the
framework here is you should be able to
see right away that it’s wider
well it’s wider because the region of
the Umpqua valley is larger we also have
more elevational differences in
latitudinal differences so we have a
bigger climate envelope but we do
overlap we have some characteristic
climates that are very similar to
burgundy and some they’re a little
similar to Bordeaux as well so this
leads me to talk about climate change a
lot of well documented changes that have
happened out there in terms of climate
and climate controlled factors in wine
regions we know that growing seasons
have gotten warmer and longer you know
that winter periods have been warmer as
well the plants are telling us that
things are changing because they have
earlier bud break and flowering and
harvest we also know that ripening
characteristics or profiles have changed
we’ve been accumulating more sugar and
producing slightly higher alcohol wines
and therefore wine styles have changed
because of pests and diseases have
changed we’ve also seen some changes
overall in characteristics of soil
erosion and fertility but we’ve also
seen water resource changes where some
places have gotten drier and some places
have gotten wetter but let’s look at a
very basic change getting back to this
diagram that we’ve just been talking
about and put it into a framework of
trying to understand how changes in
climate influence not only how varieties
can be produced but how regions can
produce those varieties based upon their
climate envelope I’m gonna go back to
burgundy burgundy in the 1950s was
relatively cool cooler than it is today
and it was still able to produce Pinot
Noir and Chardonnay it’s two Markey
varieties but did it in a slightly
different wine style framework if you of
course fast forward to where we are
today you can see that that shift of a
couple of degrees is more central to
those two varieties and so therefore
allows it to be produced more
consistently if we look at conservative
estimates of warming in the future
burgundy will likely end up here the
climatic envelope will be on they warm
up or in for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay
it doesn’t remove them from the ability
to produce those wines but what it does
is it changes the wine style overall
framework that they can produce there if
we if we look at this though this is a
conservative projection of climate in
the future what happens if it changes to
more extremes that we kind of tend to
think might happen this would put
burgundy in a completely different
framework we’re only the coolest of
places can potentially ripen fruit in
the future and potentially there will be
other varieties that can be done there
how about if we go to where we are again
here in the Umpqua Valley and think
about it we go back to the 1950s in the
uncle eval II the climates were a little
cooler than they are today
the first pioneers that came here in the
1960s planted varieties that were more
so associated with that cooler climate
and did fairly well fast forward to
today this is our climate envelope we
still produce some of those cool climate
varieties but now we have shifted a
little bit and we’re producing other
varieties how about conservative warming
in the growing seasons of four to five
degrees Fahrenheit by 2050 this is what
our climate envelope would be like we
would to be shifting a little bit in
terms of what we can do but we’d also be
opening up potentially to new varieties
in terms of our overall productivity
capability so that leads me to the idea
of what does the future hold
well first we know that today climate is
warmer than any time in our recorded
past we also know that continued warming
is highly likely while climate change
has the ability to affect every single
agricultural pursuit the narrow zones of
one great production are
prone to climate change and so I’ve
provided us some good evidence of kind
of these type of impacts into a
specialty crop system so as we look
forward to the future we have to think a
little bit about kind of what this means
for the overall perspective of wine
grape growing we know that the past 50
years have benefited quality of wine
worldwide with some climate change but
our projections into the future have a
tendency to point to the idea that some
beneficial impacts will happen but will
likely have some detrimental impacts as
well I personally believe that Oregon
has plenty to gain from overall climate
change and I think that we’ll see some
of that our are warming in our cool to
intermediate climates will likely
produce a situation in which we have
increased viability for some varieties
but we can also potentially see new
varieties that we can grow
however our warm and dry summers are
projected to nothing to get nothing more
than warmer and drier and what that
might do is that might increase heat
stress and/or increase issues of water
resource demand so I think we have some
real important issues there I have a lot
of confidence in viticulture and wine
production to to address these issues
they already have in increasing their
sustainability and are constantly
looking to reduce their vulnerability
and increase their adaptive capacity in
the face of climate change they’re doing
this through looking at better plant
material how to better manage vineyards
but also how to take that fruit from the
vineyard into the winery and control
quality into the future all of that
being said I think all of us as wine
consumers need to be adaptable to change
them as well change is going to happen
whether it be changes in wine styles or
wine varieties this is just bound to
happen in all the wine regions in the
world if you are a true terroir wrist
and you love wine then embrace these
changes go out there and continually try
to find the best wine you can find from
the magic that is terroir thank you
[Applause]
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