The Climate Component of Terroir

The choice of a given winegrape variety planted in its ideal climate, together with favorable topography and physical soil characteristics, combine to create the potential to produce fine wine. The French term terroir embodies this potential as a holistic concept that relates to both environmental and cultural factors that together influence the grape growing to wine production continuum. While the landscape, geology, and soil strongly interact to influence a vine’s balance of nutrients and water, it is the climate that is critical because it is this that limits where winegrapes can be grown at both the global and local scale. Whereas winegrape varieties are grown in numerous climates worldwide, they ultimately have relatively narrow climate zones for optimum growth, productivity and quality. In many regions a changing climate has already altered some aspects of winegrape production with earlier and more rapid plant growth and changes to ripening profiles and wine styles. As such the connections between varieties and their ideal terroirs are bound to be altered even further in the future. Research on grapevine and rootstock genetics, alterations in vineyard management, and adjustments in winemaking are addressing these issues to hopefully reduce the wine industry’s vulnerability and increase its adaptive capacity to future changes in climate.