More alcoholic wine? But of course…

As I’m looking through the bottles of wine lined up in the supermarket pondering which one to buy for my New Year’s Eve dinner, I find myself only looking and selecting from Spanish wine bottles. I favor Spanish wines because I live in Spain, but I really do believe that this country makes wonderful wines. Some are even known world-wide. I happen to live in an area known for its wine production. However, I will leave that for another post and concentrate on the matter at hand.

It turns out that the effects of global climate change keep going on right under our own noses. But sadly to say, if it doesn’t affect people directly, it doesn’t really matter. One of the latest symptoms is affecting Spanish wine producers and eventually will affect wine drinkers. According to El Pais newspaper, in the 1980s traditional varieties of grapes: garnacha, moristel, parraleta and alcañón, were yanked out of the ground to make way for the French varieties of chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon. And now it seems Spain will be one of the areas suffering the most by the effect of weather on grapes.

"Wines will have higher alcohol content, but their natural acidity will also be lower. Some reds will lose their color, others will lose their flavor, many whites will be deprived of their typical qualities, and there may be a greater proportion of reds to whites." (Yikes!)

Maybe now that the wine industry knows the effects are very real, they will contribute to use environmentally friendly techniques.