These days it is almost impossible to say anything moderately optimistic about climate change.
But geographers, archaeologists, historians, agronomists and biologist can show some positive effects, because they allow for the immense creativity and resilience of human societies, and of living things in general, as demonstrated throughout the ages and across the great variety of different habitats on the planet. One of those positive effects could be the evolution of wine.
Continual advancements in wine-making
Wine-making is a branch of agriculture that arose from whim rather than necessity, as an expression of cultural identity. It has shown itself capable of adapting to the various climatic changes that have occurred in the last 8,000 years, sinceVitis vinifera was first domesticated and disseminated. As a result, its methods – and the quality of the wine produced – never ceased to improve.
The Little Ice Age (from the 15th to 19th century) is a good example of this phenomenon. Northern Europeans are learned to have grown vines under sunny skies. But the falling temperatures of the Little Ice Age forced them to abandon what had become an increasingly uncertain crop, and look to the south to satisfy the requirements of Christian worship, via Holy Communion, and the emerging taste for good wine, which had become an essential part of life in more refined circles.
This is why we now have beautiful vineyards on the Atlantic (Saintonge, where wine is distilled to make cognac; Bordeaux in France; Alto Douro and Madeira in Portugal; Jerez and Constanti in Spain) and the Mediterranean in Spain, Sicily and Cyprus.
Shipping delicate wines by means of long sea journeys also sparked ingenuity. This is how the Dutch invented the sulfur stick that was burned to sterilise the barrels. The English began fortifying wines with spirits to stabilise wines containing a great deal of residual sugar post-fermentation and, along with the Flemish, invented thick black wine bottles made in coal-fired furnaces. These were useful for portioning out the contents of a barrel and could prolong the ageing process – as long as they were capped with a cork made of a natural material discovered by the English in Portugal.
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