Fastest Growing Wine Producing Region in the World

We have wine on our mind for the Geo Quiz.

Cheap wine, fine wine, white or red, it doesn’t matter.

The question we’re asking is: What’s the fastest growing wine-producing region in the world?

It’s a country with over a billion potential wine drinkers:

The upper classes have had a strong interest in wine bidding up expensive bottles of wine at auction in Europe and even bidding up the price of vineyards, and as that interest in wine filters down to the middle class, there’s a potential explosion in demand globally. (Lee Hannah, Conservation International

When you hear about climate change, it’s usually about melting glaciers, super storms, or polar bears.

Here’s a twist: a new scientific study looks at the impacts of climate change on wine.

Lee Hannah, an ecologist at Conservation International, led a research team of scientists in a study looking at the impacts of climate change on wine and what they might mean for conservation. The paper, Climate Change, Wine and Conservation, was published in the latest issue of the journal PNAS. In short the report highlights how climate change will put the squeeze on wine growers in the coming century. The report creates a global map of future suitability for wine production.

As for the fastest growing wine producing region in the world?

The answer is China.

Another finding of the study is that as China’s fragile bamboo forests come under pressure from wine growers looking for new plots of land, that development could adversely impact the China’s endangered Panda population.