CLIMATE CHANGE IN BURGUNDY: TIME TO ACT

Imagine the summer of 1540 in Burgundy. More to the point, imagine enduring those stifling, record-breaking months without air conditioning, antiperspirant or an ice-cold beer. Forest fires seethed across Europe, worshippers at the church of Notre Dame de Beaune joined eight separate processions to pray for rain, and the temperatures were almost unbearable. Vines suffered from hydric stress and when the grapes were eventually harvested they looked like raisins, producing wines that were sweet, rich and heady.

After three sweltering vintages between 2017 and 2019, it’s easy to forget that exceptionally warm, dry growing seasons are nothing new in Burgundy. Last year, a group of academics from the European Geosciences Union published a meticulously researched paper analysing the starting date of every harvest in Beaune between 1354 and 2018. Of the 664 years under consideration, 33 were what they termed ‘extremely early’ and 21 of those occurred between 1393 and 1719, long before the invention of the motor car or the advent of the industrial revolution. The beliefs of modern-day climate change sceptics could be further bolstered by the fact that there were only four unusually early vintages between 1720 and 1987, suggesting that Burgundy was cooler in that period.

The new reality

In 2003 everything changed, with the arrival of the region’s hottest ever summer. There have been cooler, later-picked vintages since that watershed year, such as 2008 and 2013, but the trend has been unmistakeable. Eight of the subsequent 16 vintages (nine if you include 2019, which was being harvested as the EGU paper appeared) feature in that list of 33 early harvests. In the past, conclude