A VINEYARD IN ST. HELENA ON SEPT. 28, 2020, AMID THE GLASS FIRE / PHOTO BY PAUL KITAGAKI JR./ZUMA WIRE/ALAMY LIVE NEWS

Climate Change Forces California Winemakers to Reconsider What Grapes Grow Where

Aug 4, 2021 at 1:05pm

VIRGINIE BOONE

For decades, California winemakers have long thought of the Winkler Index as gospel. Developed in the 1940s by two professors at the University of California at Davis (U.C. Davis), the Index uses regional climate conditions to determine the best places to grow a wide range of wine grapes.

With increasing pressures from heat and drought bearing down on the state, however, the Index may currently be horribly out of date. On July 22, U.C. Davis announced it would update the Index for the first time in more than 75 years. This new reality has profound implications for what we grow, make and drink in the future.

Professors A.J. Winkler and Maynard Amerine founded the Index to help the California wine industry recover following the repeal of Prohibition and loss of vines due to phylloxera. The Index became a standard way of thinking about which wine varieties to plant where and, over time, it was adopted worldwide.

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