Making sense of a sense of place: precision viticulture approaches to the analysis of terroir at different scales

Abstract

Traditional ‘terroir zoning’ has largely relied on heuristic ‘expert’ opinion coupled with approaches to land classification based on thematic mapping to describe the influence of soil conditions and climate on wine composition. Recent advances in geographical information systems (GIS) and digital mapping have enabled more robust quantitative methods to be developed, but with few exceptions recent terroir research has remained reliant on heuristic opinion and conformity to previously defined terroir units, rather than employing data-driven approaches. Using two case studies at regional scale, the aim of this paper is to illustrate how the use of methods of quantitative spatial analysis, as used to guide understanding of production system variability and to underpin precision viticulture (PV), may assist in better understanding terroir at a range of scales.
 In the Barossa region of Australia, cluster analysis of indices of soil physical and chemical fertility (available water capacity and cation exchange capacity), with critical climate variables (growing season rainfall, mean January temperature and growing degree days), clearly delineates differences between the Barossa and Eden Valleys but does not robustly promote further sub-division. Meanwhile, in the Marlborough region of New Zealand, interpolation of data supplied by wine companies from over 450 vineyards over several seasons suggests a consistent and characteristic regional ‘terroir’ in terms of vine yield and harvest date. Similarly consistent results were obtained for sub-regions of the Wairau Valley and a comparison of the Wairau and Awatere valleys. Thus, with scale-dependent modification, the methods of spatial analysis used to underpin PV and studies of within-vineyard variability offer much potential for terroir analysis and the identification of terroir zones. Importantly, these methods are unbiased, data-driven, and not reliant on heuristic opinion.

Underpinning terroir with data: on what grounds might subregionalisation of the Barossa Zone geographical indication be justified?

“…It was established in response to the 1994 Australia–EU Wine Agreement (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade 1994) and even though some Australian vineyards contain vines that are more than 100 years old, neither Australian terroir research, nor the geographical indications system, follow the long histories of established denominations and AOC rules, as they do in Europe. Accordingly, problems created by the reliance of much previous ‘Old World’ terroir zoning research on a mixture of heuristics, expert opinion and conformity to existing denominations (Ballester 2020, Bramley et al 2020, Brillante et al 2020) may be avoided. Data‐driven analysis may be especially useful in facilitating this.…”

“…The Barossa example was inspired by the efforts of local winegrowers to examine within‐GI variation in their terroir with a particular focus on Shiraz wines (see http://www.barossawine.com/vineyards/barossa-grounds/). Thus, Bramley et al (2020) clustered publicly available soil and climate data as a means of examining the extent to which subregions within the Barossa might be justified in relation to the biophysical component of regional terroir. Their results contrasted somewhat with a previous analysis based on a more traditional approach to land‐use classification (Robinson and Sandercock 2014) and, more importantly, appeared to contrast with how local Barossa winemakers thought the GI could be split into so‐called ‘Grounds’ whose wines might be perceived as distinctive.…”

“…These different results led to a different recommended basis for exploring within‐GI wine sensory and chemical differences than one offered on the basis of a ‘whole‐of‐region’ analysis (Lacorde 2019, Bramley and Gardiner 2021). Following our preliminary analysis of biophysical variation in the Barossa (Bramley et al 2020), it was of interest to explore this land use issue in a revised analysis given that only approximately 10% of the land in the Barossa GI is under vine. Furthermore, given the likely impact of climate change on terroir (Brillante et al 2020, Smart 2020), together with the knowledge that the Barossa GI has a warming climate (Petrie and Sadras 2008, Remenyi et al 2019), it was also of interest to use an updated dataset of climate attributes and to check whether the known warming is impacting on the pattern of regional variation in temperature or rainfall.…”

Improvement of technological methods of production and cultivation of grafted grape seedlings

“…Further development of this branch in our country is of great importance in the agricultural industry [5]. However, the grape growing industry is in a difficult situation [6,7]. One of the reasons is the low yield of seedlings.…”

Realization of biological productivity of grape varieties in conditions of the south of Russia under influence of shoot load

“…Moreover, all parameters, except the last, have inverse correlation with yield capacity. The precipitation amount in January has direct relationship with yield amount [6][7][8].…”