"Climate change is making the vines more and more vulnerable". Worried about the consequences of global warming, more than 50 wine growers, great chefs, sommeliers, oenologists and Greenpeace judge French wines "in danger" and call on the French government to act to reach an agreement at the United Nations conference in Copenhagen next December.
"Together, we call on the President of the Republic and the Minister of the Environment of the first wine-growing country in the world to set an example within the framework of the Copenhagen negotiations", declare the signatories of this appeal published in "Le Monde" dated Wednesday.
According to them, the Copenhagen conference, "which will seal the future of humanity", must lead to "an ambitious agreement committing industrialized countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% by now to 2020 and establishing strong mechanisms to assist developing countries ".
Because, according to these professionals and defenders of the environment, "climate change is making the vines more and more vulnerable". "If nothing is done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the vines will move 1.000km beyond their traditional limit by the end of the century: viticulture will face a challenge. radical ", they estimate, judging that" the soils will not survive ".
To stop "this destructive spiral" which sees French wines characterized by "more marked alcohol contents, too sunny aromatic ranges and denser textures", the signatories of the call believe that they must also act "now ", whereas France is today the first producer of wine in the world, ahead of Italy and Spain, its vineyards covering approximately 1,6% of the territory.
“Acting in our vines and our cellars means first of all orienting our wine-growing practices towards respecting fauna, macro or microscopic, and aerial and underground flora,” they explain. "Widespread, these practices will contribute to the preservation of biodiversity and to the strengthening of our terroirs", underline these professionals, who declare themselves "mobilized". AP
Make no mistake: they panic because Belgian wine will dethrone French productions!