Tasting Climate Change, Montreal: Charting the plethora of potential impacts

By Andrew Catchpole

Published: 20 April, 2026

It would be very sad if, at the end of these days, the focus was on politics and not climate change.” So said Michelle Bouffard, founder of Tasting Climate Change, which took place in a crisp and wintery Montreal earlier this year, where a strong Canadian and US contingency was joined by many international visitors. Spread over three days, one of the key takeaways from the many experts speaking was that climate change and its associated environmental impact is the story that trumps all. Yet there is still a sense that we as an industry are sleepwalking into what could be a radically altered near future.

As presenter and wine educator Elaine Chukan Brown put it in a session on the role viticulture can play in mitigation: “We are all in this together. The only way we will have an input on climate change, and climate impact, is to be mindful of that.”

Jean Lemire, a biologist working with the Government of Quebec, speaking on a panel covering Wine Production in a Constantly Changing World, added figures that underlined the urgency for greater action.

“The difference between 1.5°C and 2°C [above pre-industrial levels] is enormous,” said Lemire, referencing current scientific projections.

“In 2025 we reached 1.4°C and if we continue like this we will reach 1.5°C this decade… and right now we are heading to 2.9°C, which believe me is a lot, so we should all make an effort to stop that.”

The big question, answered in parts at Tasting Climate Change (due to the complexity and uncertainty of what is happening), is what this change will look like.

Already, as attendees heard from various panels, the winescape is changing. Examples ranged from a shift towards varieties such as Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot in Napa, and Bordeaux’s experimental plantings that include the likes of Marselan and Touriga Nacional, to viticulturalist Rosa Krugar’s warning that vineyards will have to go “cooler and higher” – a shift that is already happening worldwide.

Another factor, perhaps less understood, is that the globe is not heating evenly, with the Mediterranean hinterland – which plays host to a vast collective vineyard – warming faster than many other regions. Meanwhile, one arresting prediction was that landlocked Alsace is set to rise by 4°C if nothing is done to halt the warming, meaning that none of the wine styles produced there today would have a future.

Stark though such warnings are, the conference covered mitigating viticultural techniques – such as canopy management, cover crops and related biodiversity, plus wider regenerative practices – that can be and are already increasingly being employed to help maintain a stylistic status quo. For now, at least.

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Biodiversity in crisis

The event also explored both the collapse of biodiversity more generally around the world (the US, for example, has lost 93% of its agricultural variety since the 19th century), and the opposing global wealth of vitis vinifera to draw on into the future. And this latter could be of huge importance for wine production in a hotter world.

As professor Marc-André Selosse of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle said: “The collapse of biodiversity is unprecedented… And if the science is so clear on this, why are we failing to act?

“There are 6,000 to 10,000 cepages around the world, but only a few of them are used – 12 cepages cover a third of wine production, 33 cepages cover 50%. This is not a story of success, in terms of the vine’s conquest of the world.”

Unlock this treasure chest and – as with the elevation of heat-resistant former workhorse Grenache to be the star of some already warm regions – the global wine industry could have many useful varieties to draw on, so long as the will for change is there.

Sarah Abbott MW made this point clearly during Brown’s session, saying: “I think that for adaptation to climate change we’ve got to challenge cultural hegemony, what great wine is, and there’s this kind of aesthetic imperial dominance – the reverence for [top names of] France.

“And if you start challenging the idea of what a great wine can be, and which varieties it can come from, including hybrids – and a lot of these very vigorous, strong Mediterranean varieties, like Carignan, Grenache, or [in California] Zinfandel – they are capable of just as much beauty and greatness.”

Instead of being “very canonical” in our idea of what a great wine should be, Abbott suggested that by opening up to currently less celebrated – and more climate-resistant – varieties and styles the sector could in fact “really add value” for trade and consumer alike.

Brown addressed this point, using Burgundy as an example, suggesting: “Pinot Noir is changing and this grand status of Burgundy is actually disappearing, and it’s becoming Burgundy as [a style of] Pinot Noir. Because the New World, as we call it, has completely changed our perception of what a wine is and people can name varieties now.”

Leaving aside the thought that Burgundy anyway may soon have a real challenge on its hands stylistically, Brown then went on to highlight how natural wine has also been instrumental in shaping consumer perception and openness to the new.

“With natural wine, people are just tasting things – it just happens to be wine… so, this shift in thinking, in terms of natural wine, is that Pinot Noir isn’t even Pinot Noir any more, it’s just wine.

“My point is that this idea of wine correlates with changing cultural perceptions. You’re in the one of the biggest change moments of how we talk about wine and sell wine and think about what matters with wine – right now.”

And that shift in perception could well be serendipitous for the global wine trade, which – if the overwhelming body of climate science and viticultural evidence is to be believed – will continue to undergo accelerating transformation with regard to what can be planted where and how. Like it or not, climate is already stacking up to be one huge catalyst for change, redrawing the wine landscape that we’ve all known.

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