France's top wines face climate 'tipping point'

Paris

CLIMATE change has pushed French wines into uncharted territory, and could force producers to relocate, or abandon the grapes that helped to make their vineyards famous, scientists said on Monday.

Since 1980, growing conditions in northern climes such as Champagne and Burgundy, as well as in sun-drenched Bordeaux, have fundamentally changed the "harvest equation" that defined these storied regions, they reported in Nature Climate Change.

"For much of France, local climates have been relatively stable for hundreds or thousands of years," said Elizabeth Wolkovich, an assistant professor of evolutionary biology at Harvard University and co-author of…