Owing to the fact that high quality and spatially appropriate long-term climate data for each wine region are difficult to obtain, we used a 0.5◦ × 0.5◦ gridded climatology of monthly mean air temperature to examine the effects on vintage ratings (Willmott and Matsuura, 2002). The gridded temperature data archive was produced from the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN version 2) and station records of monthly and annual mean air temperature (Legates and Willmott, 1990). Data from 1950–1999 for the respective wine regions (Table I and Figure 1) were extracted and averaged over the growing season (Apr–Oct in the Northern Hemisphere and Oct–Apr in the Southern Hemisphere) and dormant season (Nov– Mar in the Northern Hemisphere and May–Sep in the Southern Hemisphere) to create 27 time series for each season.