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A friend recently mentioned he was going to be opening a special bottle he had been saving: a 2010 Grange.  When I asked him to tell me more about how he came across this wine, he said, “We have a lifelong friend of my wife’s who lives in Sydney.  She bought the bottle quite a…

Tonight’s red wine review is a lovely Chilean Carmenère that made its debut at the LCBO about ten days ago in the February 21 LCBO VINTAGES New Release Collection. It was also featured on the cover of the release catalogue and was part of the thematic on wines from the Southern Hemisphere. It is produced…

Reading Time: 7 minutes Guest post by John Penny Something has shifted in the public conversation about wine. Not long ago, wine sat comfortably in the cultural space of food, hospitality, and conviviality. Today, it often appears in headlines as a health hazard, stripped of context and treated as indistinguishable from the most harmful patterns…

By Rick VanSickle It looks like Ontario VQA wines will continue to enjoy the thrilling journey they’ve been on since March 4, 2025, when Doug Ford yanked U.S. wines off the shelves during an on-going tariff dispute with the U.S. Note, also in this Canadian Wine report: Our recommendation from the Niagara wines being released…

Extreme heat events are now more frequent, intense and last for longer periods of time. The image below shows how management techniques can have a dramatic effect on soil temperatures, in comparison with a bare soil unprotected from extreme heat. A thermal map showing extreme temperatures over 40°C (red/orange) in a ploughed field, with the…

Some traditional wine regions have been experiencing multi-year droughts. Regions reliant on snow meltwater, e.g. Mendoza Argentina, are experiencing dramatic reductions in available water. New regulations are prioritising groundwater for other crops and this is likely to increase in the future. Dry farming techniques are being implemented where feasible. In addition to the impacts of…

More frequent droughts and heatwaves are driving an increase in wildfires, which damage vines and reduce yields through burning and smoke taint. Many regions have recently suffered from wildfires, including Australia and South Africa experiencing devastating fires in 2026. In 2020 two million hectares of forest was lost in California.  So why are we getting…

Climate change is leading to an increase in extreme precipitation events. Warmer air temperatures mean that the air can hold more moisture. Therefore, when it does rain, there is an increase in frequency and extent of flooding. The pattern of rainfall has also changed. Many traditional wine regions would not expect rainfall during the growing…

Many wine regions are familiar with spring or autumn air frosts that can cause crop loss or damage. However, climate instability is resulting in unpredictable frost patterns, and warmer springs (which result in advanced phenology) are making buds and young shoots more vulnerable to spring frosts. Techniques to help protect vines from frosts include: Active…

Some wine regions are familiar with hail and the damage it can do to vines and grapes. Conventional hail risk reduction approaches include the use of hail nets, hail cannons, cloud seeding and spreading risk through geographically diverse vineyard parcels. However, climate change is expected to result in larger and more devastating hail storms. Techniques…