A little over a month ago, we attended the II International Climate Change and Wine Conference here in Barcelona, Spain. Having been our first conference with a professional camera man in tow, our goal was to: interview as many speakers as possible to give us a good breadth of knowledge as to what the issues are that are impacting our vineyards, give wine consumers a better understanding as to how wine culture may change, and finally, learn how we as wine lovers may support sustainable agriculture. However, despite our best efforts, when a question was posed to us in an article on the immediate impacts of climate change, we quickly realized that we failed to interview one of the key researchers on how climate change is currently impacting grape vines, Dr. Gregory Jones. Hence, what we’ve provided below is a Q&A with Dr. Jones, along with a series of links where you can find more information on his research.

Tell us how your research intertwined wine and climate change? Did it start with climate change and slowly morph into the inclusion of vines, or were you always a die-hard wine fan who feared the loss of your favorite past time?

I started studying climate, viticulture and wine about the same time. While I consider myself a climatologist (formal training), I focused my work on understanding the role climate plays in grapevine plant growth, fruit composition, yield and quality issues. Originally, I was more interested in the basic structure and interaction, but climate variability and change issues were evident in many of my studies and rose to the top as an important issue to study.

Did you consciously hope that wine would raise the discourse of climate change, or was it merely …