A closer look
Leave it to a French historian to figure out global climate patterns by analyzing when people were picking grapes. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie pioneered climate history by ignoring standard political records and instead digging into centuries of European agricultural logs. By tracking the exact dates of wine harvests, he painstakingly reconstructed the Little Ice Age, proving that a multi-century drop in global temperatures caused massive famines, economic collapse, and witch hunts. Turns out, a bad year for Pinot Noir was usually a catastrophic year for humanity.
