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United Kingdom

Viniculture

In the United Kingdom, the number of vineyards has doubled in the period 2017-2022 to almost 1000 (7).

Opportunities in Scotland

Many current wine grape producing regions may decline in the coming decades, largely due to warmer growing seasons pushing grape varieties beyond their optimum growing conditions (5). One way of adapting wine production to climate change would be the poleward movement of viticultural regions. A recent study (based on one regional model downscaling one GCM) explored to what extent Scotland might become suitable for wine production under high-end climate change (the so-called RCP 8.5 scenario) (4).


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Opportunities in England

In the UK, the rapid growth of the viticultural sector in the twenty-first century has been related to climate warming, as new areas of England and Wales have become suitable for cool climate viticulture. The increasing inter-annual variability of climate factors may continue to threaten productivity, however (6). 

It is to be expected that higher temperatures and CO2-concentrations will benefit viniculture in Southern England (1). Relatively little has been published on the impact of climate change on viniculture in Europe, however. In Europe, areas that may be suitable for viniculture will increase especially in Northern Germany, Denmark and Southern England (2). In fact, the area that is being used for viniculture in Southern England has already increased by 250% between 1985 and 2000 (3).

References

The references below are cited in full in a separate map 'References'. Please click here if you are looking for the full references for the United Kingdom.

  1. Stock et al. (2004)
  2. Harrison and Butterfield (1999); IPCC (2001), both in: Stock et al. (2004)
  3. Palutikof (2000), in: Stock et al. (2004)
  4. Dunn et al. (2019)
  5. de Orduña (2010); Jones et al. (2005); Webb et al. (2011), all in Dunn et al. (2019)
  6. Nesbitt et al. (2016), in: Patriche and Irimia (2022)
  7. Gannon et al. (2023)

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