As climate warms, no sour grapes in France

(Aljazeera) - On a small parcel of land tucked into the gently undulating landscape of the Loire Valley, a region in central France dotted with historic villages, sprawling castles and fruit orchards, François Blanchard and a crew of friends, neighbors and fellow winemakers pick organic grapes from the château's vieilles vignes, the old vines. This golden October afternoon is the first time the grapes will be picked in many years, and though some winemakers might have given up — the vines were thickly overgrown and lay abandoned in the years before Blanchard took over the family business — he is convinced they are worth salvaging. "They're like an elderly person," he says. "They have a wisdom we can learn from."

Learning from the past is important at his family's Château du Perron vineyard, where everything is done by hand — and sometimes, by foot. Blanchard, a bass player who came back to winemaking after more than a decade devoted to jazz, considers the link to nature and tradition to be the very point of this business. This weekend, there’s a horse named Joker among the grape-pickers, patiently pulling a plow and turning dirt along the long rows of vines. The white grapes picked today will this evening be crushed in a hand-turned press to be made into sauvignon blanc. In two weeks, it will be time to harvest the red grapes, which will be sorted and stemmed by hand in wooden baskets, then pressed in buckets by bare feet to make cabernet franc. Coarse, fresh grape juice is drunk from jam jars; last year's wine is passed around as inspiration for this year's vintage. With dirt under the fingernails and grapes between the toes, it is hard not to feel a close connection to nature.

Which is why winemakers have been among the first to notice the effects of climate change on their crop. Higher temperatures over the past few decades have meant earlier harvest dates and variations in grape maturation. No one knows exactly what the long-term implications of climate change will be on the wine industry in France — which, along with Italy and Spain, is responsible for almost half the world's wine production — but it’s a topic that has both winemakers and scientists concerned.

France's income from wine and spirits reached a new record in 2012 with 11.2 billion euros in sales, reflecting a 10 percent growth from the year before. The wine and spirits market is the country's second most important industry after aeronautics.