Why Climate Change Could Wither Santa Barbara Agriculture

For 40 years, Richard Sanford has grown some of Santa Barbara’s most admired pinot noir wine grapes. A soft-spoken man who began his career in viticulture after returning from the Vietnam War in 1970, Sanford’s Alma Rosa winery stretches across 100 rolling acres in the Santa Rita Hills outside of Buellton. Admiration of Santa Barbara wine has grown alongside production, and Sanford is now modestly famous for being among the first to recognize that the transverse mountains of the Santa Ynez, Edna, and Santa Maria valleys were perfectly suited to Burgundy-style wine-growing. He also was an early proponent of sustainable, organic farming.

In a recent interview with The Independent, Sanford was asked about studies suggesting that the California wine industry may be threatened by climate change. A 2006 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, for example, found that wine production in the state may decline by as much as 80 percent by 2100. Wine grapes, the study’s authors noted, are sensitive to unusually hot and cold temperatures, wind, weeds, and pests-all of which are expected to be intensified by global warming. Though many vintners, particularly in Napa and Sonoma counties, have said they fear that climate change will seriously harm their industry, Sanford was circumspect. “I don’t know that school’s out on what the effects of climate change will be,” he said. “There’s a lot of different speculation, and I don’t think anybody fully knows what’s going to happen.”

Like 73 percent of his fellow Americans (according to a recent Pew poll), Sanford believes that climate change is real, dangerous, and caused by humans. But his caution about what it may or may not do to California wine grapes reflects an awkward moment in the arc of public and political opinion about climate change.