Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[SiouxPal]

Wine before its time alarms Italy

Global warming, or perhaps just a hot summer, puts the nation's grape harvest on a fast track

By Christine Spolar | Tribune foreign correspondent
August 16, 2007

GROTTAFERRATA, Italy - Patrizia Filippi has no degree in meteorology or any idea how to calculate what scientists call extreme weather change. But the 43-year-old grape picker has been working this area's silky, volcanic soil for nearly three decades, and she knows what she sees:

This is an early harvest unlike anything that Italy, or any generation in her family, has experienced in memory.

"I'm a bit scared," Filippi said, pulling and snipping a thick, juicy bunch of white grapes from the vines of the Castel de Paolis estate. "I've never picked grapes this early in the season. We're used to picking grapes in October. That's when the grape festivals are. Even my father is saying: What the hell has gone wrong with the world?"