When you buy expensive luxury items are you helping to kill the planet? Depending on your favorite brands you just might be. In a recent study done for WWF it came to light that many luxury brands are making use of environmentally damaging materials and practices, and although some did worse than others none of them did very well. The study looked at the top ten luxury brands and found them all seriously lacking in some way. The solution? Some say getting this information out to the public (you can download the entire report for free here) and calling for celebrities to use their endorsement powers for the greater environmental good is the first step. What's your take?

Although I have fretted quietly (and sometimes not so quietly my friends can report) about climate change for some time, I've never actually been in a room with a climatologist before. It's one thing to hear Al Gore or scientists on the Discovery Channel talk about it but it is another thing altogether to hear it live from people who studied it and to hear it related specifically to one of my favorite subjects, wine.

The consensus among the Climate Change panel members at the Unified Wine and Grape Symposium was that change is imminent, indeed it is already happening. How that change will continue to manifest remains uncertain. The one constant that I took from the panel is that temperatures will continue to rise over the next few years and this will directly affect at least some of the wines we love. If you have been following the tribulations of ice wine producers during this season, you may already be aware that some wines are changing. Without question, the future of winemaking will be different than it is today.

With yesterday being Earth Day, there has been much talk about the future of the environment. One thing I hadn't seen discussed until I read this Observer article is the effect of global warming on wine.  A recent conference called  'Global Warming and Wine'  looked at the issue in depth. Grape growing may, in the next 40 to 70 years, may no longer be possible in the Catalonian wine regions of Spain. The Bordeaux region could also be in peril. Water restrictions will also change the future of wine making. If you like wines that grow in warmer climates ( Petit Verdot, Grenache, Touriga, Zinfandel, Shiraz, Viognier and Muscat among others) then you are in luck. The article also points out that red wines may be able to be grown in areas that are traditionally too cold for red grapes.