Drawing a parallel with the stabilisation wedges introduced by Pacala and Socolow for greenhouse gases, this paper presents the concept of adaptation wedges. In the authors’ proposed framework, the damage avoided by each adaptation activity creates an 'adaptation wedge' relative to the loss that would occur without that adaptation activity. A case study of premium wine grape production in the western United States is used to study the sensitivity of wine grape cultivation to different levels of thermal stress to simulate the likely impacts of warming in the near-term (until 2039). The study reveals that a large adaptation wedge can be realised through adaptation in the form of increasing the heat tolerance of the wine grape varieties. It also finds that warming projected over the near-term decades has the potential to alter the quality of wine grapes produced in the western US, and the authors discuss potential actions that could create adaptation wedges given these potential changes in quality. The authors conclude that while this study represents an initial exploration of one aspect of one industry, the climate adaptation wedge framework could be used to quantitatively evaluate the opportunities and limits of climate adaptation within and across a broad range of natural and human systems.