Climate Change and the End of Typicity

Wine regions have always changed. We pretend they don’t because wine culture loves continuity. It loves old stones, old vines, old cellars, old maps, old families, old words printed on old-looking labels. But climate change is making that preference harder to sustain. Heat, drought, wildfire, erratic frost, early harvests, and shifting disease pressures are no reshaping what grapes can grow where, how they ripen, how much alcohol they produce, how much acidity they retain, and what flavors they appear in the glass. Producers are responding with new canopy practices, altered harvest dates, irrigation strategies where allowed, drought-resistant rootstocks, and in some cases different grape varieties altogether. Bordeaux, hardly a region known for reckless experimentation, approved several climate-adaptation varieties, including Arinarnoa, Castets, Marselan, Touriga Nacional, Alvarinho, Liliorila, and Petit Manseng, though under strict limits. So climate pressure is testing long-standing…