AS I peer into my crystal glass to puzzle out where the wine world is going next, I see one constant: climate change. It challenged winemakers in 2023, the hottest year in history, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Wildfires in Greece; massive heat and drought in Spain; and floods, frost and hail elsewhere in Europe all took their toll last year, resulting in one of the smallest harvests ever. But Napa, subject to wildfires and heat waves in the recent past, escaped with one of the best vintages ever. You could argue that global warming has been good for the UK, as well as fledgling vineyard efforts in Norway and Sweden – places where, in the past, would have been too cold and rainy to ripen grapes sufficiently. All of this makes climate change’s impact very hard to predict for the coming year.

But there’s other big news in the wine world for 2024. Here are the six major trends I’m watching: