Canadian Researchers Are Leading Efforts to Protect the World’s Wines From Climate Change
A vine mess.
Even the most casual wine drinker has at least one story of a special bottle enjoyed in a special place with special company tucked away in their memory. That’s the thing about wine: no matter how memorable the flavour, the experience is often what one remembers.
Strange to think such memories were almost erased. Starting in the 1860s, the global wine industry faced an existential threat: phylloxera, near-microscopic, aphid-like pests accidentally imported from North America that literally sucked the life out of European Vitis vinifera vines. After more than 70 per cent of Europe’s vines withered across the continent, French vintners saved the day by grafting Old World vines onto phylloxera-resistant New World roots, thereby ensuring we all still have cabernet in our glass, whether sauvignon or franc.
Today, oenophiles once again face the horror of a world without wine—and this time, the enemy seems even deeper rooted. Climate change has brought increasingly frequent heat waves, out-of-season frost, wildfire smoke, drought, hail, and torrential rain to much of the world’s premier terroir, along with a surfeit of rusts, moulds, blights, and pests that thrive because of them. As aberrant weather becomes the norm, life becomes more difficult for many of the most celebrated Vitis vinifera cultivars and for those who make their livelihood from them.
The good news: scientists, researchers, and master vintners are coming up with solutions—including a few made right here in Canada—to solve the vine mess we’ve got ourselves into. St. Catherines-based Clean Works has patented a decontamination system that bolts on to a converted harvesting machine to douse grapes with an eco-friendly combination of hydrogen peroxide, ozone, and ultraviolet light to combat the mildew and fungus that thrive as summers become warmer and more humid. And over at the National Research Council, a team of scientists have developed ABA Boost, a soapy solution of hormone “antifreeze” that triggers a plant’s natural defences against winter deep freezes and late-spring frosts.
In wine, there is truth. Let us hope that in the fight for wine, there will also be truth: about our refusal to throw up our hands in the face of climate change. And our resolve to preserve what has been a foundational element of culture for over eight millennia. That’s something even the most casual wine drinker can raise a glass to.
