The Impact Of Climate Change On The Production Of Spanish Wines

Spain is the third largest producer and the largest exporter of wine in the world. Spanish wine, therefore, plays a vital role in both the global wine industry and the domestic Spanish economy. The most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) documents increasingly convincing evidence of climate change and the potential damages a changing climate may have on important agricultural sectors. In this paper we examine the effects of climate change on the production of Spanish wines. We use hedonic regression techniques to tease out the relationship between wine yields and changing weather patterns (temperature and precipitation). This research may help better inform stakeholders in the wine industry on which areas in Spain may suffer the most and which areas are expected to thrive. Our results suggest substantial geographic differences across Spain in the effects of climate change on wine production. However, we show that increases in growing season temperature and precipitation have a negative effect on high quality wine yields in the most southern – and therefore most vulnerable – region of Spain.