by Felicity Carter in Barcelona

The vineyards of Chile, Argentina, New Zealand, parts of Australia, northern Europe and China all stand to benefit from the greenhouse effect, according to respected viticulturalist Dr Richard Smart, speaking at the Climate Change and Wine 2008 conference in Barcelona. He said that as the world warms, the wine regions most likely to thrive are those that still have cool climate regions available to exploit.

“Chile’s Casablanca Valley and other such systems can be developed,” he said. “You can go eastwards and up the Andes, or south to the South Pole.”

China, he added, has enormous land to the north they can move to. “I suspect that in 30 years time we will see that China is one of those countries better able to adapt to global warming.”

Other countries to benefit will be England and Denmark, which both have emerging wine regions.

The news for some of the world’s greatest wine regions is less good, with Dr Smart forecasting major changes ahead throughout southern Europe. Such changes include longer growing periods, hotter summers, more extreme temperature spikes and more pests and diseases. As an example, he pointed to the recent emergence of the multicoloured Asian Lady Beetle, which can ruin the grapes it lives in by contaminating them with methoxypyrozine secretions. The bug now afflicts vineyards in Canada, the mid West of the USA, Italy, the UK and Belgium.

Dr Smart also suggested that the best vintages of Bordeaux may already be behind it. And the news is not all good for Australia. Although Dr Smart said it has cool climate resources that it has yet to exploit properly, such as Tasmania, he predicts its overall area available for wine grape cultivation will shrink by 2050.

His suggestions for adaptation included buying vineyards in cool climate and elevated areas and turning to different grape varieties. Dr Smart said urgent attention needs to be paid to vine breeding, to find varieties able to withstand the expected rises in temperature; however, he dismissed the idea of genetically modifiying wines, saying it would lead to oddities, like cactus and vine crossings. “As long as we give them millions of dollars they will have Chardonnay adapted to higher temperatures,” he said, adding that the result of such experiments was likely to be “Chardonnay-flavoured tequila”.

Dr Smart finished by saying that the response to climate change ultimately had to be a political one, and called on the wine industry to raise the issue at a political level.

“I would encourage you not to believe that global warming will go away,” he said. “It’s here with us and will continue to have its impact.”