There they go again. National Public Radio published an article on its website claiming global warming is wreaking havoc on Italian wine production and forcing producers to seek new ways to protect their grapes. Yet the objective data show wine production in Italy, the rest of Europe, and the rest of the world are all doing quite fine.

As CFACT documented last month, global wine production set a new record last year. Italy was no exception, as Italian wine production also set a new record in 2018. Italian wine production is down some in 2019, but wine analysts attribute the 2019 decline to wine producers deliberately growing fewer grapes this year because they had so much holdover wine from 2018. To the extent weather impacted the wine grapes that were grown, unusually late spring cold weather and frosts diminished output. Of course, as we are all lectured, global warming causes an earlier end to winter and an earlier start to spring. Without our recent modest global warming, this year’s cold spring would have been worse, this year’s late frosts would have been worse, and this year’s grape harvest would have been worse.

Leave it to NPR, however, to spin the record 2018 wine production, the excess wine held over into 2019, and the cold spring weather on global warming. NPR described the cold spring and late frosts as “weather extremes due to climate change.” Well, I guess “weather extremes” is one way to describe a cold spring and late frosts. Blaming those on global warming, however, is simply preposterous.

Regardless of what NPR would have people believe, wine production in Italy and throughout the globe is doing just fine as our planet modestly warms. So raise a glass and toast global warming!