This is a hobby project — built for the fun of it, and out of curiosity about how the world's wine regions might shift as the climate changes. There's no company behind it, no advertising, nothing for sale, and nothing tracked.
Feedback is very welcome: ideas for features, bugs you've run into, corrections to the science, or just a note to say hello. Write to cheers [at] futurewinezones [dot] com — spelled out that way to keep the spam bots off, so swap the brackets for the usual symbols.
Each coloured cell is classified by its Growing Season Temperature (GST) — the average temperature across the seven growing-season months (April–October in the Northern Hemisphere, October–April in the Southern). GST is the standard measure used in viticulture to describe a region's wine climate.
Future Wine Zones is a personal, non-commercial project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET); "WSET" is their registered trademark and is used here only to identify the climate classification the map follows. Nor is it affiliated with WorldClim, CARTO, or OpenStreetMap.
From 2030 onward you can switch between three IPCC pathways. Years up to 2025 are observed or trend-projected, so the choice has no effect there — but the selector stays available so you can set a pathway before playing the timeline.
Comparing the same year across scenarios is the clearest way to see what emissions choices mean for where wine can be grown.
All three scenarios use a single climate model, ACCESS-CM2, and it is a high-sensitivity model — it warms more for a given amount of greenhouse gas than the middle of the evidence supports. IPCC AR6 itself uses ACCESS-CM2 as one of five models representing a physically plausible high-warming storyline (around 4.8°C, the upper bound of the very likely range), rather than as a central estimate.
This is the known CMIP6 "hot model" problem: the current model generation spans an unusually wide climate sensitivity range (roughly 1.8–5.6°C for a doubling of CO₂), and high-sensitivity models are over-represented in it. Their outcomes can't be ruled out, but they are better read as "low likelihood, high warming" than as the expected case — which is why AR6 weighted models by sensitivity instead of using a raw multi-model average.
When a variety is selected, a cell is shown as suitable if its GST falls within that variety's preferred range, drawn from Gregory Jones' climate-maturity research and adjusted where high-latitude sunshine limits ripening in practice. The colour still reflects the underlying WSET zone, so you can see where a variety sits within its comfort window.
In the Suitability view, hatching flags cells where rainfall — not temperature — is the constraint: desert (under 200mm/year), irrigation-dependent (under 400mm/year), and disease risk (over 600mm during the growing season, raising fungal pressure). Rainfall now follows the same timeline as temperature: observed CRU TS data to 2020, a 2021–2024 trend projection for 2025, and CMIP6 SSP2-4.5 projections beyond. Water limits are off by default — use the Water limits button to switch the hatching on.
Each variety is shown as suitable where the growing-season temperature falls in the range below. Green dots are white grapes, red dots are black grapes. Ranges follow Jones (2006), adjusted where high-latitude sunshine limits ripening in practice; sparkling is treated as a style rather than a single grape.
| ● Sparkling wine | 11–15.5°C |
| ● Pinot Meunier | 12.5–15°C |
| ● Riesling | 13.5–16°C |
| ● Gewürztraminer | 13.5–16°C |
| ● Grüner Veltliner | 13.5–16.5°C |
| ● Pinot Gris | 14–16.5°C |
| ● Pinot Noir | 14–16.5°C |
| ● Sauvignon Blanc | 14–17.5°C |
| ● Chenin Blanc | 14–18°C |
| ● Semillon | 14–19.5°C |
| ● Cabernet Franc | 14.5–18.5°C |
| ● Chardonnay | 14.5–19°C |
| ● Merlot | 15–19.5°C |
| ● Nebbiolo | 15.5–19°C |
| ● Barbera | 15.5–19.5°C |
| ● Tempranillo | 15.5–20.5°C |
| ● Carménère | 16–19.5°C |
| ● Viognier | 16.5–20.5°C |
| ● Malbec | 16.5–20.5°C |
| ● Sangiovese | 16.5–21°C |
| ● Syrah / Shiraz | 16.5–21°C |
| ● Cabernet Sauvignon | 16.8–20.2°C |
| ● Zinfandel / Primitivo | 17.5–22°C |
| ● Touriga Nacional | 18.5–21.5°C |
| ● Grenache | 18.5–22.5°C |
| ● Mourvèdre / Mataro | 18.5–23°C |
Two other efforts map wine and climate, and are well worth a look: grapeclimate.com and winemap.eurac.edu (Eurac Research).
Future Wine Zones was built independently and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or derived from either. Any resemblance in approach reflects the shared underlying climate science, not a connection between the projects.
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Two exceptions, both unavoidable for a website to function. The map's background tiles are fetched from CARTO, which necessarily sees your IP address (see CARTO's privacy policy). And the host, Cloudflare, keeps standard server logs including IP addresses, as every web server does (see Cloudflare's privacy policy).
Under the GDPR an IP address counts as personal data, so: the lawful basis is legitimate interest in serving the site securely; the data isn't used to profile or track you; and it isn't shared beyond the two parties named above. Turning off the map tiles isn't possible without removing the map, but nothing else here phones home.
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