Wine and a kind of perfect climate for it

I had classes of a discipline named Climate Change, with a wonderful teacher, mister Dieter Anhoulf. He used to teach (I hope he still teaches)  in very clear and focus manner,  pointing where doubts were, where the knowledge come from and where was the border of it. He was always in a good humor. He is a man who deserves to be called professor and a kind of person who I try to look up to inside the classroom.

It was because of him that I became close to the environmental knowledge, that I started to read e learned about it until I designed some post graduate courses.

One of most interesting classes of his course, besides brings me good academics memories, is about Mediterranean Climate.

Besides the name of this climate is Mediterranean, it occurs not only at South of Europe but at south of South Africa, southern of Australia, at west of Chile and California.

The understanding of climate allows us to comprehend some facts of history.  For instance, it helps to explain the reason of Arabs (Moors) could stay and had lived during 700 years at the Iberian peninsula in a very arid region that looks like the north of Sahara desert.

This kind of climate is dry, with very low moisture during the summer and a little bit wet at winter. This is the perfect climate to produce better grapes and wines.  A summer with low moisture made the water inside grapes dries; it produces a more flavorful wine. In Canada there is a very rare wine. The ice wine, when the grapes are harvested frozen.

Backing the course of the professor Dieter, during one of the classes I made an association between the better climate to production of wine and the Mediterranean climate. Neither the University of Berlin nor a single part of Germany has an intersection with Mediterranean climate. My mistake.

Even these regions produce very good wines; sometimes these lands undergo same atmospheric phenomena. Dry summer with no rains permits fire to occur and disseminate. In this way, in Portugal, in parts of Australia and California is very common that fires consume houses and even entire household. Bob Burnquist, mega ramp skateboarder, almost lost his house and ramp.

This event is not connecting with climate change. The same hot and dry summer that made the exact grapes promotes the fires.

 The nature in these regions made a natural selection and the well-adapted trees have good protection against fire, layers of cork. Those layers work as a thermal insulation and protect trees, do not allowing them to die. Houses don’t have this kind protection and fire passes from one to another building and smoke can be seen from the sky.

In Brazil, historically, wines are made at the South, in Rio Grande do Sul state. In this part of country the climate is subtropical. It means, wet summer, with rains and dry winter. In São Paulo, we have the same climate. As the air pollution is a serious problem here, during the winter, with few rains, particulate matter remains floating around the air. This matter is greedy for water and gets the air dryer and dryer. Children suffer a lot because of it and pediatric hospitals become full.

In time, I did not get an A in this course