Much publicity today about how English wine is allegedly benefiting from global warming. The way things are going, we are assured, the South of England will soon be turning out red wine on a Mediterranean scale. Naturally I don't believe a word of this, not least because of the mounting evidence that we're probably already in a cooling phase in the northern hemisphere. And why would anyone bother with an English red wine? The much-vaunted whites are sorry stuff, compared to what you can get for your money if you buy French - and heck, if the good lord had meant us to drink English wine, he wouldn't have plonked France down on our doorstep, would he?
Anyway, a TV report last night from this very vineyard (which I've visited, and indeed walked through - nice place) included a contribution from the geologist who first spotted Denbies' winemaking potential. Oh yes, he said, they'll be making good robust reds all over the South of England soon - but of course (of course?!) by the end of the century, global warming will have made it far too hot to produce any wine at all in England. You can't win, can you, with global warming...
Friday, May 09, 2008
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
I will drink to that Nige. Started drinking the stuff in 1957, never ever stopped. Classic moments, on our frequent visits to Chamonix my climbing partner and I would stock up on the rough red stuff, 70 pence per litre, nothing at all wrong with it. In Portugal, pre their common market entry, Dao, £2 per gallon, no need for cocaine. In the back of an Alfa in Bergamo, "whats the breathalyser limit Perninio", "it's a abouta 2 bottlesa depends on the polica". If wine dried up I would become a lost sheep.
ReplyDeleteHeaven is an Oddbins corporate account.
Cooling phase? Not here on Long Island. We are usually good for 2 or 3 solid snowstorms a year and we haven't had one in two years now.
ReplyDeleteYou do know that southern England used to be a wine-making region, right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period
Oh yes Tom - the great medieval warming, which all in all sounds like a lot of fun. I'd sooner a bit of that than the cooling... The evidence for all this stuff is all over the place, which is why it's insane for such an overwhelming, faith-like consensus to form around the 'truth' of global warming, when the world has enough real and very present dangers to be addressing.
ReplyDelete...spot on, Nige - the population time bomb being one of them!
ReplyDeleteAnd also the certainty that we will run completely out of resources in a few years unless the UN takes charge of them all.
ReplyDeleteBut cheer up, Nige. Global cooling may deny you your dream of English Bordeaux, but maybe you will live to savour Spanish scotch.