Laura Siepmann is a master’s student in the Sustainable Development program at Uppsala University, studying organic wine farming in the regions Pfalz and Rheinhessen, Germany under the supervision of Kimberly Nicholas of Lund University.

As I strolled through vineyards in the German wine region Pfalz recently, there were beautiful rose almond blossoms all around me. As a farmer told me: “It’s February and they are not blooming a little, they are in full bloom.” Another farmer called the unseasonably early bloom “fascinating… I am shocked.”