Agriculture is responsible for roughly a quarter of the planet-warming greenhouse emissions each year. It can also play a major role in combating climate change through capturing and storing carbon dioxide in the earth.

“Soil is our largest potential tool in our fight against climate change,” Ms. Casteel said.

Viticulture is just a small link in the agricultural chain, and the number of grape growers like Ms. Casteel, who farm with care to make expressive wines of place, is smaller still.

Yet because fine wine for many people is the most visible agricultural product they will consciously encounter, viticulture is important beyond its numbers in the discussion of agriculture and climate change. What people learn about farming from their interest in wine, Ms. Casteel and others believe, can help to drive a deeper discussion about agriculture and climate change.

“Wine awakens a part of us that is meant to think deeply about things,” she said. “It’s different from eating a great piece of kale. Because it can be emotional and intellectual and natural, the people who interact with wine and take it seriously, once their eyes are opened, it becomes a conversation that otherwise might never have happened.

“They care about climate change, they care about organic food for their children. It’s a gateway drug like no other, and it’s the reason I make wine.”

Over the last 30 years , viticulture has become more important in the discussion of wine then ever before. Before World War II, viticulture, like agriculture in general, was mostly the province of small farmers who worked the earth as their ancestors had for generations.

After the war, mechanized tools, technology and new agricultural chemicals became available. They were marketed as cheaper and labor-saving, and were considered a boon to a world wearied and wounded by two world wars and the Great Depression.