Dry red: Australian wine's withering future

The Australian: Climate change could wipe out up to 80 per cent of Australia's wine production as large parts of inland irrigation zones become too hot and dry to support grapevines, a US academic has warned. Visiting Australia on a fellowship with Melbourne University, environmental scientist Dr Greg Jones said winemakers in the US and Europe were buying up land at higher altitudes and in coastal regions where cooler conditions would provide a buffer to global warming.

Similarly, in Australia, as higher temperatures reduce inland rainfall, horticultural zones reliant on irrigation, such as the Murray-Darling Basin, may no longer be productive. "The biggest issue in Australia is how the water situation will work its way out. Without irrigation, 80 per cent of the Australian industry is in peril," Dr Jones said.

More than two-thirds of the 1.5 billion litres of wine made in Australia every year comes from hot inland zones, such as South Australia's Riverland. "In the Murray Darling, without water, adaptation isn't going to be easy. If people can't produce the same volume crop with less water, they'll have to get out."

…Dr Jones said while climate change was not a rapid process, it was important to begin studying the effects of the problem in order to formulate a timely response. "It's the difference between me coming running at you with a knife and me telling you a meteor may hit the planet in the next 50 years," he said. "Climate change is slow -- it's hard for people to perceive and grab a hold of a good 10-20 year plan."

Industry veteran Brian McGuigan said climate change was the biggest threat he had seen in 48 years of winemaking, but the industry had so far been unable to decide how to react. "One of the most concerning things that confronts winemakers and grapegrowers is that we're not aware exactly how extensive the climate change will be, and until we know the answer to that question you don't know how far south or how high you should go to continue making quality wine," he said….

Map of Australian wine production, "historicair," Wikimedia Commons, under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation license, Version 1.2