Climate change is coming for your glass of wine. But longtime viticulturalist J. Stephen Casscles has a solution: hybrid grapes. “Cultivating grapes is becoming harder and harder to do because the environment is getting a lot hotter and wetter and we’re experiencing more violent weather patterns with more hurricanes and droughts,” explains Casscles, author of Grapes of the Hudson Valley and Other Cool Climate Regions of the U.S and Canada. “Hybrid grapes are generally more productive and disease resistant. They roll with the punches much better in the vineyard.”

Casscles has witnessed this firsthand on the farm he and his wife, Lilly, bought in 1989 in New York’s Hudson Valley. There, he grows 107 different grape varieties in a region where wine- making dates back to the 1800s. He traces the evolution of heritage grapes — indigenous, native or historically notable — in his website, hudsonvalleyheritagewines.com, and in the forthcoming second edition of his book, in which he writes about varieties that were developed in New England in the 19th century.

Growing grapes and making wine is a labor of love that dates back to Casscles’ youth when he helped tend his grandparents’ fruit farm in the Hudson Valley. He recently retired from his day job — he spent 36 years lawyering for the New York State Senate and New York State Department of Public Health — which gives him all the more time to cultivate his passion for vinification.

In his own winemaking — Milea Estate Vineyard carries his signature line — Casscles features hybrids that combine European grapes, known for their taste, with more resilient Native American grapes, which require far less pesticide inter- vention to ward off disease. “Sustainable agriculture is the future,” says Casscles. “We can produce great tasting wines with hybrid grapes and frankly, I would much rather be at the pool than spraying toxic chemicals during growing season.”