After weeks of scorching heat, winemakers in France are not heading into the harvest season the way they have historically. “Thirty years ago, they started the harvest at the end of September and would sometimes end at the start of November,” said Alicia Dorey, a French lifestyle and wine journalist. “Now it’s beginning in August, so it’s worrying.” Wildfires in southwestern France have already destroyed more than 40,000 hectares in the Gironde department this year. And the increasingly volatile climate conditions are threatening the wine industry, one of France’s most valuable economic sectors. Winemakers are adapting by harvesting early. Elsewhere in Europe, rising global temperatures are helping a burgeoning winemaking industry in countries farther north, including Scandinavian countries. “This is why we find wine in England now and in Bornholm, an island off the southern tip of Denmark, among other places,” said Dorey. Despite wine production appearing in unexpected places, experts say it's too early to expect a revolution in the industry. “We cannot talk about a drastic shift yet,” said Hugo Seilly, senior lecturer at the Burgundy School of Wine & Spirits Business. Some vineyards in Norway and Sweden have reached economic sustainability by consistently producing quality grapes every year, he said. Yet Scandinavian entrepreneurs have been “driven by the size of their domestic market”, meaning they haven’t yet moved into exporting their wine. While the total surface area that Spain dedicates to vineyards is decreasing, it still leads the world with 930,000 hectares (2.3 million acres) followed by France with 783,000 hectares of of vineyards. China is in third place (733,000 ha) followed by Italy (728,000 ha) and Turkey (410,000 ha). But a bigger geographic shift in wine production from south to north could come later. “There are a lot of questions about the sustainability of vines in Spain, as most of their vineyards are drastically drier," Seilly said. "They suffer more than other countries from climate change and its consequences.” Access to water is also a big issue. “There are projections that most of Spain will have a desert-like climate by 2050, potentially wiping away large areas of production,” he said.