What effect might changing weather have on our wine?
Seven months as Visiting Scientist at Italy’s leading institution (IBIMET-CNR) exploring practical solutions to food sustainability makes Dr Jim Salinger the ideal speaker on lessons New Zealand might learn from Europe on the effects – or not – of climate change on wine.
Doctor Salinger, who enjoyed his seven months researching climate variability and wine quality in Tuscany, says his talk will be aimed at the “average wine drinker”.
The ‘good’ and ‘poor’ ranked vintages of Bordeaux reds and Tuscany Chianti wines have quite contrasting climates and weather patterns throughout the growing season. The European lessons are applicable to New Zealand, where widely diverse climatic patterns occur across our different wine growing districts.
Dr Salinger is currently the Ernst Frohlich Fellow investigating climate and fisheries variability in the South East Australian region. He is a leading international climate scientist on past and present climate trends, having studied climate change and variability in New Zealand and the South Pacific for over 35 years, linking climate trends with natural and anthropogenic causes.
He has been president of the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) Commission for Agricultural Meteorology, leading an international team examining the effects of climate on agriculture.
