The Rhone river, seen from a Domaine Vernay vineyard

Christine Vernay was on holiday in Missouri when she got the call. It was August 12 2003 and the French vineyard owner was not due to return home for 10 days; the harvest on her Rhône valley estate would begin in late September. But then a friend from Condrieu called her husband’s mobile phone.

“The grapes have ripened early. You need to come home now,” he said.

France was sweltering in the most extreme heat wave on record. Christine and her husband, Paul Ansellem, caught the first flight back but by the time they reached the vineyards most of the grapes in their 18 hectare estate had shrivelled on the vine.

Instead of rows of plump, light golden fruit, the couple found shrunken berries, burnt brown by the sun. “We’d never seen anything like it,” says Christine, a petite 52-year-old mother of two, who took over the renowned Vernay estate from her father in 1997. She scrambled to arrange a harvest within three days of their return. Even so, the vineyard produced only half its usual volume of wine that year. The grapes were simply too desiccated.

Ms Vernay’s experience offers a stark preview of what scientists say could be the future of the wine industry in southern Europe. Heat waves like that of 2003 will occur with increasing frequency in coming decades, they predict, while average yearly temperatures will continue to rise.

Martin Beniston, a senior climate scientist at the University of Geneva, and a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says: “Current research suggests that by the end of the 21st century, one summer out of two will be at least as hot as 2003. Which implies that certain summers may be even hotter. Where one heat wave summer can have a beneficial effect on some grapes, several in a row would take a heavy toll on all but the most robust species.”

Since 2003, every summer but one – 2007 – has been hotter than the average of the 30 years before, according to France Météo, the meteorological office. This summer was France’s fifth hottest since 1950, with the average temperature 1.3° C above normal.

In August, for five days in a row, temperatures in southern France reached 40° C; in Languedoc and Beaujolais, grape-picking began in late August, while even in northern France wine growers are preparing for a premature harvest.

“It will be a very early vintage, without a doubt,” says Jean-Louis Vézien, director of CIVA, the Alsace organisation of wine growers and handlers.

Franck Thomas, European sommelier of the year in 2000, believes the result is already altering French wine “profoundly”. “If you harvest earlier . . . the alcohol content is higher [and] it unbalances the wine. For instance, with red wine, you have the maturity of the alcohol but not the tannins coming from the skin. So you lose the freshness, and the wine becomes tart and unpleasant.”

He is not alone in his concern. In August, Thomas and 49 of France’s top chefs, sommeliers and wine producers wrote to Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, arguing that climate change was threatening the survival of the wine industry and pushing for France to demand a 40 per cent cut in global carbon emissions by 2020 at this December’s Copenhagen conference.

“French wines, jewels of our shared, cultural heritage, elegant and refined, are in danger,” they wrote in the letter, which was published in Le Monde. Their fear is that rising temperatures in southern Europe could render centuries-old practices of wine growing irrelevant. Grapes across the Mediterranean would roast on the vine before reaching full maturity.

France’s position as a revered producer of wine is thanks to centuries of cultivation, after the Greeks and the Romans imported techniques of viticulture into the Burgundy, Bordeaux and Rhône regions. But it rests on the delicate balance of climate and soil.

“France’s primacy at the top level of winemaking is an accident of nature,” says Alun Griffiths, wine director at Berry Brothers & Rudd. “France just happens to be in the perfect position to make a range of fantastic wines. It’s considered a reasonably marginal climate – just a bit farther north in Britain it’s not quite hot enough; Africa is too hot.”

If that changes, the specificity of certain wines could be destroyed for ever, according to Franck Thomas. “In 2003, the wines lost their identity. It was very bizarre. Wine from the Loire valley tasted like wine from the Rhône. If we don’t do something now, in 30 years we will have that problem every year.”

The village of Condrieu is about 40km south of Lyon, and overlooks the wide Rhone river at its only turn. Curving upwards from the Rhone are rounded, lumpy hills; not terribly high, but steep.

As far as the eye can see, vineyards stipple the light brown hills with green. The vines grow in orderly, narrow rows, defying the inclines, as if someone has combed the hills with a green-fingered brush.

Ms Vernay’s father, Georges, made 54 harvests before handing over the running of his Condrieu estate to his daughter. In all but two of those years, the harvests fell at the end of September. Now that has changed.

“Since I took over we’ve had 10 consecutive years in which our harvests have been about 10 days earlier than normal,” says Christine Vernay. “The vineyards are a witness to climate change as it is happening now. Of course we can think of ways to adapt in the short-term, but it’s most important that we start stopping or slowing down the change in climate. Otherwise we are facing real catastrophe.”

This article was first published in the Financial Times, here.

Last weekend I escaped to the Netherlands for a flying visit to see my parents. The utter scene-shift, from a rainswept London full of tiredness and adulthood to the sparkling cold sunlight that greeted me on Saturday morning in the Hague, with the breakfast table already laid and my parents reading the paper and making toast when I came downstairs in my dressing-gown, felt wholesome and good and cherishing, like having a tea-cosy pressed around me. To my admittedly geektastic excitement, I travelled via Eurostar, from the renovated St. Pancras station. The clean, shiny-newness of everything, from the lanterns, redbrick arches and glass roof to the laptop portals (with UK and European plug sockets) makes you feel like train travel is something exciting, even (whisper it) luxurious.

The station before the renovation, which took 10 years.

After.

For comparison’s sake, I also took some snaps of Brussels Midi. Tintin; brilliant idea for decor. Also the mischievous, massive advertisement for the new fast Eurostar service to London, which shows Blair, Thatcher and Major all holding EU balloons which they are about to pop.

Freiburg is crucially a green party stronghold: in 2002 Mayor Dieter Salomon sailed into power with 65% of the vote, making it the first large green-governed city in Germany. But the burg’s eco-credentials go further back, and this is what makes it unique: in 1969, revolutionary transport regulations prioritized cyclists, public transport and pedestrians; the following year cyclepaths were introduced (they now run to 500km); and while most of Europe phased out its trams, Freiburg’s network was bravely being expanded. To put this in context, it’s instructive to remember that right around this time, in 1971, French President Georges Pompidou was declaring, “the city must adapt to the car”. Good old Freiburg clearly wasn’t listening: two years later the town centre was completely pedestrianized. Roll on 1991 and there’s even a treat for the exercise-shy: a low-cost “environment public transport ticket” -just 44 euros a month will get you unlimited access to buses, trains and trams throughout the town and its 60km radius. Incredible. Mayor Salomon told me the highly successful scheme has since been copied across Europe, aswell as attracting research delegations from China and Japan.

Transport is just one element in the town’s sweeping eco-strategy. After the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 the council energetically pursued alternatives to nuclear power. Freiburg is now known as the solar capitol of Europe, hosting the headquarters of many solar research companies aswell as a Solar Training Centre. An innovative “solar village” has just been built within the new Vauban district of ecologically designed homes, where 50 solar houses all produce more energy than they consume. In 1996 the town had 274 square metres of solar cells; a decade on, solar panels span a colossal 11,223m. The 19 floor façade of Freiburg’s central station consists of 240 solar panels and the council even boasts a dedicated “solar information desk”.

Freiburg’s landscape is literally green, too: 42% of the surrounding area is under conservational protection and, as of 1992, any new construction on Freiburg’s municipal land must comply with a stringent low-energy standard, which caps the permissable energy requirement of a building at two thirds the national limit. Mayor Salomon argues that individual action is vital: “The real difference comes when people change their lifestyle, and this is also the real challenge. Thirty years ago in Germany there was only a small minority of people that lived in this way, and the majority laughed at them. Today, lots more people are thinking about it seriously.” He adds that Freiburg isn’t only concerned with limiting further damage; they’re now planning for a warmer world: “Freiburg will get a lot warmer, but we’ll also have a more extreme climate. We expect flooding and storms”.

One of Freiburg’s favoured methods of mitigating the effects of climate change sounds somewhat like a new dance move: “greenroofing”. Fast becoming Germany’s favourite home improvement, the process basically entails transforming roofs into vegetation layers that allow stormwater run-off, reduce energy costs and mitigate the urban heat-island effect. Freiburg’s other big coup is a scrupulous recycling scheme: each household has 4 separate bins, and even kitchen and garden waste is composted. Consequently, waste disposal has more than halved since 1988, allowing Freiburg to win “best recycler” in the EU’s 2001 “Urban Audit” (80% of Freiburg’s waste was recycled, compared to the European average of just 19%).

Despite the incredible achievements of this smallish town in the Black Forest, Freiburg’s Head of Energy Klaus Hoppe isn’t complacent, saying “There’s still a lot to do.” New targets are being set each year; right now Hoppe’s concerned with raising the 1.6% of power sourced from bioenergy to 2.7% by 2010. “Freiburg” literally means free city. The town’s eco-logic demands a lot of rules, but in the long-term it’s securing a more important freedom: that of future generations to inhabit a sustainable city. How long will it take for the rest of us to catch up?