How climate change is impacting the wine and spirits industries

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• Geoff Bennett:

  Climate change is altering the very nature of wine and spirit production around the world – from the destructive fires that rip through California's wine country each year to the floods that threaten grape and grain harvests from Bordeaux to Napa Valley.

  Brian Freedman is a wine, spirits, food, and travel writer. His new book "CRUSHED" captures how growers and producers around the world are adapting to sudden and dramatic climate shifts. Brian Freedman joins us now. Thanks for being here.

• Brian Freedman:

  Thank you for having me.

• Geoff Bennett:

  And, the wine and spirits industry, I was struck to learn, that's a $120 billion industry. So it's a huge part of the economy, a huge part of the culture. And, in this book, you capture how climate change is affecting the industry, but you do it by looking through the eyes of the people who grow the grapes and who produce the wine. What did you find?

• Brian Freedman:

  You know, these are human stories at the end of the day, I think a lot of times it's easy, especially when it comes to wine, to assume that everybody who's making this product is living in a grand chateau and taking three hour, you know, lunches that are soaked with wine and duck. The truth is, that's not the case. And like you said, it's a huge industry. It's growing. There are countless jobs at stake here. So I wanted to look at eight regions around the world and tell the stories of the producers of the growers who are really experiencing the impacts of climate change firsthand.

• Geoff Bennett:

  So tell us about Kutch wines. You profiled them in the book. It's a boutique producer in the Sonoma Coast and you talk about how they deal with the persistent threat now of wildfires.

• Brian Freedman:

  So it used to be that there was a "fire season." Now it's kind of like that risk is, I don't want to say omnipresent, but it's- it's out there sort of at all times in the background, if not in the foreground. So, you know, producers around the world and California's a great example — they're changing when they're harvesting, right? I mean, when it comes to bad fire seasons, so much of your success is, of course, predicated on not having your vines burned to the ground, but also, did you get your fruit in before smoke taint could affect it? Right? So it has to do with different vineyard management techniques. Maybe there's different rootstock. To a certain extent, there are mitigation techniques, right? I mean, you look at what Kutch is doing. And with their new vineyard that they've recently purchased, they're introducing all these healthy microorganisms into the soil. Right? They have nitrogen fixing cover crops between their rows. So all of these things are working to make sure that the soil is healthier, that the roots can go down further, which also helps them to stave off some of the more dangerous effects of climate change.

• Geoff Bennett:

  So, you know, wines are celebrated for their distinct terroir, the way humidity and sunlight and precipitation, altitude, all of that, how it changes the grape and how it manifests in the wine. What does smoke from a wildfire do to that?

• Brian Freedman:

  I mean, it could have a huge impact on the ultimate aroma and flavor of the wine, right? I mean, you know, I tell the story in my chapter on Kutch. It was these these crazy fires. Jamie and his wife Kristin had had just gotten to Half Moon Bay on vacation.The fruit was was crushed, sorry. You know, fermentation had happened. And then they were ready to sort of unplug for a few days. And all of a sudden their cell phone started blowing up with text messages. There's fires. They're getting closer. They're getting closer. Ultimately, with this sort of vaguely cinematic, you know, rush back in their cars to get back to Sonoma. By the time they got there, they couldn't even get past the fire line. You know, the fire department had blocked them off. One of the workers had seen that you couldn't see hardly from one side of the winery to the other.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Wow.

• Brian Freedman:

  But fortunately, by the time Jamie was able to get in there, his wines were more or less protected because they had already undergone the process of fermentation. Had his grapes been harvested a week later, two weeks later, it would have been a complete wash of a vintage. And it turns out that the wines are stunning, but so much of it is about timing. You also have producers in California who are using things like it almost looks like netting that goes over the vines to help protect it from the pounding of the sun. So there are people in the industry, throughout the industry who are working hard and passionately every day. And I have found that the people who grow the grapes and grains who make the wine, and distill the spirits, I believe firmly are going to be the ones who lead us into a future where our agriculture, not just for our wonderful fermented and distilled beverages, but all agriculture, they're really helping us figure out how to live with this, how to pivot, and how not to get destroyed by it.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Yeah. Well, let's talk more about the people who distill the spirits, because it was just a few years ago in Kentucky, massive flooding in the eastern part of Kentucky. What has climate change meant for the American whiskey industry?

• Brian Freedman:

  Well, I mean, you know we all see at least where I'm from in Philadelphia, there was a time earlier this year where there was, you know, a two bottle maximum for many of the whiskeys that you wanted to buy, right? So supply chain is affecting everything. But if we even look at the big brands who are sourcing commodity grains. Climate change is wreaking havoc with that. Right. I mean, if there's floods at a commodity grain farm in Saskatchewan, the big brands can maybe absorb that pricing a little bit. But when you're making millions and millions of bottles, what does that do to the bottom line? These are still businesses, right. There's another bottling that- I'm drawing a blank who made it? But, the warehouse where it was being aged, this whiskey was effectively knocked over by this rogue tornado.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Wow.

• Brian Freedman:

  And actually, what they did, because this barrel had been exposed to the elements while they were rebuilding, it turned out it was a very interesting and unusual aging process, and they then ended up selling that. But, you know, it's- I think that we are also going to be seeing, in the spirits world, more pressure, not just with whiskey, right? But I was talking to one distiller who works for Sazerac, who's in charge of three of their gins. And because there was an ill timed flood that hit some of the countries in Asia where he sources so many of his botanicals from, he had to scour the earth in order to find the botanicals. So, you know, the smaller producers, the craft producers and the larger brands are all being affected, but they're all finding ways to, sort of, navigate their way forward.

• Geoff Bennett:

  You also brought with you some wines from Israel.

• Brian Freedman:

  Yes.

• Geoff Bennett:

  How are they keeping pace with with climate change?

• Brian Freedman:

  So, Israel is a fascinating place. You know, they've been making wine in Israel for 5,000-plus years. They are now really getting the respect in the industry that it so richly deserves. And what I found about Israel, I visited there in the summer of 2021 to report for the book. This producer is very interesting. This is Tabor. Their agronomist, a woman named Michal Akerman — she had this sort of revelatory moment right where this was years ago, and her vineyards looked kind of like they used to on the postcards with the perfect rows, not much between them. And then somebody from the environmental organization said to her, Do you love nature? Simple question. She said, Of course I love nature. I make my living in nature. And this person said, You're sure about that? Because what I'm seeing here is not a full ecosystem. And a switch was flipped in her head. And that began a process that led to Taber becoming one of the leaders in the country's wine industry, in terms of bringing back this ecosystem. And in fact, on the label, there's an owl. And the reason the owl is there is because once the owls came back, right, that meant that there was enough insect life in the soil and their predators and their predators. And as she helped bring back this beautiful natural ecosystem, the wines are world class. So it's not just about dealing with the immediate and long term impacts of climate change, but it's also about respecting the environment, because when we respect the environment, like you said, wine is an amazing lens through which to see a particular patch of planet Earth. When we respect the environment and give those vines a healthy, full ecosystem to grow in, then the product itself is even better, as demonstrated by this wine by the Shiloh Secret Reserve. These are wines that are really expressive of their place.

• Geoff Bennett:

  And on the other end of this, you have places like the U.K., which were not able to produce wines because of their climate historically. Now, with warming temperatures, they are getting into the game.

• Brian Freedman:

  That's right. That's right. And it's interesting because in southeastern England, there are parts there where there's sort of this white chalk in the soil and champagne, a lot of the best grapes, particularly Chardonnay, grows into famously white, chalky soil. So if you look, it's kind of like similar geological origins. It's just northern France and the channels kind of get in the way. It was always too chilly, too cloudy, too rainy in southeastern England to reliably produce great wine. Now, all of a sudden, an extra degree or two Celsius each year changes everything. So, the wines are amazing. Ironically, as I was finishing up after I just finished up the book this summer in parts of southern England, it hit like 40 degrees Celsius, right? Which is, what, 100 degrees? Something like that. Way too hot for grapevines. But in general, that's a part of the world that is benefiting from this. They are, however, seeing and all the producers I spoke with in England told me this: the warmer weather is great, however, the rain, when it's coming in, is worse. It used to be sort of they all said this this easy drizzle, most of the time, with exceptions, of course. Now they're getting these torrential downpours which cause all kinds of other problems, right? Maybe you're washing off some of the topsoil. So they're dealing with other things. But in general, climate change for the wine industry of southeast England has, kind of, been a good thing.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Brian Freedman, the new book is "Crushed." Thanks so much for being here with us. I appreciate it.

• Brian Freedman:

  Thanks for having me.