Climate Talks
Wine Education and Climate Change
INTRODUCTION
Wine is first and foremost an agricultural product, extremely vulnerable to climate change. Its impact is being experienced by vintners in a variety of ways, as extreme weather events, from droughts to heat waves, from out of season hail to floods, are impacting yields, phenology, wine quality and taste and vines health. Harvests have been lost and new regions have arisen because of it.
But just as wine production is affected by a changing climate it also contributes to enhance it in a variety of ways, may it be through the choice of packaging, viticulture practices or transportation.
In this Climate Talk we’ll seek to understand how key education institutions around the world are changing their curriculums to prepare a new breath of future vintners, viticulturists, and wine business managers to acquire the necessary skills and knowledge to address the new reality they will encounter and ultimately protect the wine industry.
HOST
GREG JONES / USA
CEO ABACELA
Gregory V. Jones holds the Evenstad Chair in Wine Studies, and is a professor and research climatologist in the Department of Environmental Studies at Linfield College. He specializes in the study of climate structure and suitability for viticulture, and how climate variability and change influence grapevine growth, wine production and quality. He holds a BA and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in Environmental Sciences with a concentration in the Atmospheric Sciences. His dissertation was on the climatology of viticulture in Bordeaux, France with a focus on the spatial differences in grapevine phenology, grape composition and yield, and the resulting wine quality. He conducts applied research for the grape and wine industry in Oregon and has given hundreds of international, national, and regional presentations on climate and wine-related research. He is the author of numerous book chapters, including being a contributing author to the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report, and other reports and articles on wine economics, grapevine phenology, site assessment methods for viticulture, climatological assessments of viticultural potential, and climate change. He was named the Oregon Wine Press’s 2009 Wine Person of the Year, named to Decanter Magazine’s 2009 Power List representing the top 50 most influential people in the world of wine, has been in the top 100 most influential people in the US wine industry in 2012, 2013, and 2018 (intowine.com), and named in the Top 50 Wine Industry Leaders in Wine Business Monthly in 2016, 2017, and 2018. Recently he was bestowed with the Honorary Confrade with the Rank of Infanção (Nobleman) from the Confraria do Vinho do Porto for his work with the Portuguese wine industry.
GUEST
DARIO CANTÙ / USA
PROFESSOR AND LOUIS P. MARTINI ENDOWED CHAIR, DIRECTOR OF THE UC DAVIS CHILE LIFE SCIENCES INNOVATION CENTER
Dario Cantù is Professor and Louis P. Martini endowed Chair in the Department of Viticulture and Enology at University of California Davis. He obtained a MSc in Agricultural Sciences from the Universita’ degli Studi di Milano, Italy, and a PhD in Plant Biology at UC Davis. He is an expert in plant genetics and genomics. In the Department of Viticulture and Enology, he leads a research team that studies the genetic bases of important viticulture traits, such as disease resistance, salt tolerance, flower sex determination, and aroma biosynthesis. He also created the widely used www.grapegenomics.com, a web portal that offers grape researchers a wealth of genomic datasets and user-friendly tools. He teaches courses in Viticulture, Grape Diseases and Pests, and Berry Development, and has been leading the MSc program in Viticulture and Enology since 2017. He is also executive director of the UC Davis Chile Life Sciences Innovation Center, an international center of excellence based in Chile, focused on R&D and extension in agriculture and environmental issues.
GUEST
JEREMY CUKIERMAN MW / FRANCE
DIRECTOR AT KEDGE WINE SCHOOL, WSET CERTIFIED EDUCATOR AND AUTHOR
Jeremy Cukierman has been a wine merchant in Paris for more than 15 years. Through his wine business he works with more than two hundred wine producers from all around the world.
WSET Diploma in 2012, Jeremy Cukierman then became a Master of Wine in 2017 and the recipient of the Madame Bollinger award, the same year, for his outstanding performance in tasting in the Institute of Masters of Wine examination. Since then, Jeremy Cukierman trains French sommeliers who compete in the international sommeliers contests. He also consults for private clients and companies, notably for a Japanese airline company.
Since July 2018, Jeremy Cukierman is the director of the Kedge Wine School, the wine & spirits department of Kedge Business School, with more than 300 students attending wine programs every year. Jeremy also lectures in conferences on international vineyards, but also on climate change, which was the topic of his research paper in the Master of Wine examination and of his second book.
Additionally, Jeremy Cukierman writes for different French and international publications, including la Revue du Vin de France for which he is member of the tasting committee. He is the author of the book “Vignerons Essentiels” which tells the story of 26 vignerons who made a mark on wine history, a book for which he won the best wine book award at the Plumes d’or de la gastronomie et du vin, the OIV Award and the Clos Vougeot-Livres en Vigne Award. His latest book « Quel Vin pour Demain ? Le vin face aux défis climatiques » was released in September 2021.
GUEST
HANS R. SCHULTZ / GERMANY
GEISENHEIM UNIVERSITY
Hans Schultz received a Bachelor of Science degree in Viticulture and Enology from Geisenheim, Germany (1983), a Master of Science in Horticulture from the University of California, Davis (UCD) (1986) and a Ph.D in Crop Science from the University of Gießen, Germany, in co-operation with UCD (1989). He was a Post-doctoral fellow at UCD 1990-1993 and at SupAgro in Montpellier, France, 1993-1995. He became section head of the Viticulture Department at the Geisenheim Research Center (GRC) and Professor at the University of Applied Science Wiesbaden/Geisenheim, Germany, 1995, Director of the GRC, 2009, and President of the newly formed Geisenheim University 2013 (until present).
He has been a Visiting Professor to Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, Australia in 1998 and is currently the elected president of the Experts group SUSTAIN on sustainable development and climate change of the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) in Paris.
