In Grapes of Wrath and in a number of comments below that article, I made the point that despite climate catastrophism around wine-making, there have really been a number of good news wine stories in recent years. In the light of a recent Guardian article I thought it worth checking out the latest climate woes trotted out to worry the faithful. This time it’s in connection with prosecco, the Guardian article in question being titled “From parched earth to landslides: crisis in the prosecco hills of Italy”. The point is rammed home by the sub-title: “Farmers and researchers tell of the impact of a rapidly changing climate, and the measures being taken to adapt”. The second and third paragraphs set the scene for what Guardian readers can expect from pretty much any Guardian article about anything these days – it will be bad news, and it will be because of climate change:

Spring frost kills buds, summer hail storms thrash leaves, long droughts starve vines of water, while strong rains spark landslides that drown them in mud.

In the rugged hills of Asolo, halfway between the canals of Venice and the peaks of the Dolomites, the farmers that produce prosecco, one of the most popular sparkling wines in the world, have been plunged into crisis mode by the tempestuous weather that has arrived with the climate crisis.

A couple of paragraphs further on we are treated to more of the same, but on an international scale:

Climate change is affecting wine producers everywhere. A study in Nature found that by the end of the century 90% of traditional wine regions could disappear from coastal and lowland parts of Spain, Italy, Greece and southern California.

It is true that the study cited includes that observation, but it’s significant that (as the Guardian tacitly acknowledges) the study doesn’t say that climate change is adversely affecting wine producers everywhere. On the contrary – while it does suggest forthcoming problems for some parts of Spain, Italy, Greece and California (it says “could” rather than “will”, and its timescale is by the end of the century, not short-term), it also mentions (which the Guardian doesn’t):

Warmer temperatures might increase suitability for other regions (Washington State, Oregon, Tasmania, northern France) and are driving the emergence of new wine regions, like the southern United Kingdom.

So, unlike the Guardian take on the study, it is far from all being bad news.

As for prosecco, the Guardian knows (it even links to a Guardian article about it from September 2021) that many of the problems being experienced in the region might be attributed to issues other than climate change. The story the Guardian then reported was of “ruthless expansion” of wineries, of forests on the steep hillsides being cut down to make way for vines, and of uncontrolled use of pesticides. Rather than link almost in passing to its earlier article, the Guardian might have mentioned this detail this time around. Of course, had it done so, it would have undermined claims such as this, which it is now making:

Prosecco is particularly sensitive to volatile weather. When rain falls hard in the “hogback” hills of Valdobbiadene and Conegliano – a Unesco heritage site that, along with Asolo, makes the most exclusive labels – the steep slopes that grow glera grapes can quickly morph into torrents of fast-flowing earth. During long periods of drought, any water that does hit the sun-crusted inclines washes straight off.

No doubt this is true, but no doubt it is much worse when forests, which bind the soil together, are destroyed to make room for more vineyards, especially when the slopes are so very steep. And they are very steep:

Furthermore, due to the steepness of the slopes, the Prosecco Hills are known as heroic vine-growing because such steep slopes (over 30% at altitudes of around 500 m above sea level) require exclusively manual and extremely hard labour.

Well, an alarmist Guardian reader might say, that’s as may be, but what about those hail storms that are being driven by man-made climate change? You can’t deny that they are damaging to vines and grapes? No, I can’t and don’t deny that, but I do question whether anything new is going on here. For instance, over half a century ago the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology published a study which is now available to view on the internet. It is titled “A General Description of the Hail Problem in the Po Valley of Northern Italy” and covers a wide area which includes the Prosecco Valley. The abstract runs to three paragraphs, and tells us enough for us to realise that the hail problem there is nothing new:

The Italian Po Valley hail problem is examined and a description is presented of its economic, dimensions, its climatology, and some of the meteorological factors which influence it. A brief history of hail prevention in Italy is presented, covering ancient beginnings and tracing the development of the use of explosives employed by farmers at the present time in the Po Valley.

Italy has the worst hail problem in the world, the estimated average low being $1333 per square mile W annum, nationwide, with an average loss reaching $7106 per square mile on a smaller scale in the Po Valley of North Italy.

The great crop loss to hail is not due to excessively frequent hall. Point and areal hail-day frequencies are lower than many other hail areas in the world. The great loss value is due to a combination of 1) high crop value, 2) high hall frequency during the growth season, 3) storms that are large in areal extent, 4) frequent large hail, 5) long hailfall durations, and 6) large numbers of hailstones per square foot. The meteorological cause is found in the unique terrain configuration of the Po Valley and the cyclonic development which it causes during the passage of synoptic systems.

For those interested, the full study can be found here.

It may (or may not) be the case that the problem of hailfall is getting worse – I am in no position to comment – but it’s certainly nothing new. As to the extent of the financial damage being caused by such weather events, perhaps that has more to do with the great recent popularity of prosecco and the massive extension in its production that has taken place. I haven’t been able to track down 2023 volumes, but one report suggests that 2022 was a very successful year:

The Prosecco DOC Consortium reported an exceptionally prosperous year in 2022. More than 638.5 million bottles of Prosecco at a total value of over €3 billion were sold. The amount of Prosecco produced also increased in 2022. The DOC reported a rise in output of 1.8% from the previous year.

“The 2022 harvest was a success in terms of quantity and quality, satisfying anticipated demand for 2023” , states the Prosecco DOC in a press release from March this year.

What does all this tell us? Nothing new, I suppose. It confirms what we here already know, namely that the Guardian will use selective quotes to buttress its narrative of climate alarmism. It will stress the downsides and ignore the upsides. It suggests that even where (as in the Prosecco Valley) it’s possible that climate change might have a small part to play in a small problem, those problems might already have existed (e.g. damage from hailstorms) to a substantial extent. We can see that human activities such as cutting down forests on steep hillsides almost certainly have far more impact than climate change. In short, we can observe that where there are numerous factors at play, with climate change playing at best a small supporting role, the prevailing narrative will stress that it’s climate change that is the problem. Or, as John Ridgway recently put it in a comment below his recent article:

…the simplified narrative in which climatic causations are quantified but the non-climatic are not. This is one of the manifestations of ‘climate reductionism’. But here we have numbers for both the climatic and non-climatic factors, and it even turns out that the non-climatic dominates. And yet, bizarrely, the standard narrative still treats the climatic as if it were primary! Even with the numbers to demonstrate the true ranking of impact, the standard narrative still wins out. The only casualty is the integrity of basic arithmetic. The power of the established consensus, eh?

The BBC, of course, is equally guilty of this sort of thing. I have my eye on a BBC article on a different topic where it does exactly the same as the Guardian did in this case. I may get round to a similar critique of it shortly, all being well. Watch this space.