Climate change may affect the quality of your booze.

So says a Czec climatologist. Hops, a key ingredient in the Czech Republic's excellent pilsner, are being affected by heat and have gone down in quality.

And French wine growers are worried about the state of the Pinot Noir grape. In the Burgundy and the Bordeaux wine regions, where the Pinot Noir grape for centuries has been grown for fine wines, rising temperatures are apparently producing grapes with far higher sugar and alcohol levels.

Good news for the English, though. Some wine growers are seriously considering decamping to the land on the cooler side of the Channel. If they don't, they can always export their more potent wines to Britain and compete with UK alcohol manufacturers who've made a special effort to invent drinks they can target at Britain's 'youff' for whom the popularity of a drink is in direct proportion to the amount of alcohol it contains.