The Problem of Terroir in the Anthropocene

Climate is integral to the concept of terroir. With anthropogenic climate change, the terroir of the world’s winegrowing regions is changing, and will continue to change for decades or centuries. The clearest signal of this shift comes from the earlier harvests of winegrapes over the last several decades with harvests 2–3 weeks earlier in France and other regions. These earlier harvests have reshaped the climatic profile under which berries ripen, leading to wines with higher alcohol and shifted phenolic and aromatic attributes. But these shifts also hint at a major way to adapt viticulture to climate change—through matching variety phenology to the current and future climates of established winegrowing regions. Here I show how variety phenology—the timing of major growth and reproductive events including budburst, flowering, veraison and harvest—is a critical component of terroir and one that is becoming increasingly mismatched due to climate change. I outline how growers and researchers alike can leverage current and new data to help develop a framework to shift varieties with climate change, and discuss how this could help build a more dynamic definition of terroir—one that embraces the challenges, and potential opportunities, of the Anthropocene.