Former US Vice President Al Gore will be the keynote speaker at a 2008 conference devoted to climate change and its impact on wine.
The International Climate Change and Wine conference, the second to be organised by the Wine Academy of Spain, will take place in Barcelona in February 2008.
The roster of speakers includes international consultants Michel Rolland and Dr Richard Smart, and winemakers Miguel Torres of Bodegas Miguel Torres, Ernst Loosen of the Dr Loosen estate in Germany, and Bruno Prats, former owner of Chateau Cos d’Estournel.
Gore, a speaker and champion environmental awareness and author of An Inconvenient Truth and star of the documentary of the same name, will kick off the two-day event on February 15.
The conference will comprise presentations, panels and seminars covering topics associated with oenology and global warming – specifically, the implications for vines, viticulture and wine itself of rising greenhouse gases and UV-B rays. These subjects are among those debated in the November 2007 issue of Decanter magazine.
The first Climate Change and Wine conference was held in 2006, and featured experts like Dr Christian Butzke of Purdue University and Dr David Smart of UC Davis. It attracted 40 journalists from 17 countries.
Written by Maggie Rosen
