Winegrowers are trying to preserve the flavor of your favorite reds and whites as climate change alters the compounds in grapes
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It was a hot day in the vineyard, and I was covered in dust, sweat and sticky juice from the grapes I had been collecting for my research on how grape biochemistry is affected by light and temperature. Suddenly, I saw something that made me stop short. Tucked in one corner of this 6.5-acre plot in Carneros, in California's fabled Sonoma Valley, with row after neat row of Pinot Noir grapes, were a handful of alien vines. I had studied the arcane art of ampelography—the practice of identifying grapevines by the shape of their leaves and clusters, as part of my graduate training in viticulture—so I took an educated guess at what they were: the red varieties Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, Syrah and Malbec, plus a white, Sauvignon Blanc.
The next time I saw Ned Hill, an old friend from high school in nearby Napa who now managed some of the finest vineyards in the region, including this one, I asked him about those strange vines. “That's an experiment I'm doing,” he said. “We're already pretty warm around here for growing Pinot. The price is good right now, so I don't want to make any changes. But pretty soon we might do better growing something else, so I'm trying out some war mer-climate varieties.”
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