Terroir 2004 banner
IVES 9 IVES Conference Series 9 Méthodologie pour application et valorisation des études de terroir dans les caves cooperatives des Côtes du Rhône (France)

Méthodologie pour application et valorisation des études de terroir dans les caves cooperatives des Côtes du Rhône (France)

Abstract

[English version below]

L’appellation d’origine contrôlée “Côtes du Rhône” se caractérise par une très forte implantation du mouvement coopératif. Afin de mieux exploiter le potentiel qualitatif de leurs terroirs, plusieurs coopératives élaborent des “cuvées terroir”, résultat des sélections de vendanges provenant de différents secteurs.
Le travail répond à la demande des professionnels pour approfondir la connaissance de la diversité de leurs terroirs, pour évaluer leur incidence sur la matière première et pour établir une démarche permettant de mieux gérer les sélections parcellaires.
La méthodologie proposée se déroule en trois étapes :
I. Caractérisation de la diversité des terroirs au sein d’une cave coopérative : cartographie des sols.
II. Evaluation du fonctionnement, essentiellement hydrique, des principaux sols et de leur incidence sur le comportement de la vigne et sur la composition du raisin. L’objectif est de dégager des indicateurs simples pour caractériser cette incidence.
III. Application pour les sélections “terroir” : ces outils sont testés ensuite pour la mise en place d’une sélection parcellaire au niveau de la cave.
Cette démarche a été appliquée sur différentes caves. A titre d’exemple, nous illustrerons cet article avec les résultats obtenus pour la cave de Rochefort du Gard.
La méthode présentée débute avec une étude de zonage. Elle se complète ensuite par une évaluation du potentiel de différentes unités de sol et, enfin, donne lieu à une application pratique pour améliorer la gestion des sélections de vendange dans un contexte professionnel bien précis, celui des caves coopératives.

Most of the “Côtes du Rhône” controlled appellation wine is produced by cooperative wineries. In order to make the best use of the qualitative potential of their “terroirs”, several cooperative wineries produce specific “cuvees terroir” with harvest selections from different districts.
This work is an answer to professionals’ needs to enhance the knowledge of their “terroirs” diversity, to evaluate their effects on grape berry composition and to work out a methodology to improve the management of harvest selections.
The proposed methodology is developed in 3 stages :
I. Characterisation of “terroirs” diversity of a cooperative winery area : maps of the soils.
II. Evaluation of the way the most important soils function, essentially for water and of the influence on vine behaviour and on grape berries composition. The aim is to look for simple tests explaining this influence.
III. Application to “terroir” harvest selections : the tests are then tried out to set up a harvest selection in the winery.
The methodology is applied to different cooperative wineries. In this paper we will show, as an example, the results from the Rochefort du Gard winery.
The proposed method starts off with a zoning study. It is then completed by an evaluation of potential quality of different kinds of soils and finally, it leads to practical application in order to enhance management of harvest selections in a quite precise professional context, which is that of cooperative wineries.

DOI:

Publication date: January 12, 2022

Issue: Terroir 2004

Type: Article

Authors

B. Rodriguez Lovelle (1); F. Fabre (2)

Syndicat Général des Vignerons des Côtes du Rhône
1) Institut Rhodanien, 2260 Rte. du Grès, 84100 Orange (France)
2) Maison des Vins, 6 rue des Trois Faucons, 84000 Avignon (France)

Contact the author

Keywords

Terroir, cartographie, méthodologie pratique, cave coopérative, propriétés du sol, disponibilité hydrique, qualité du raisin, sélection des vendanges
terroir, mapping, practical methodology, cooperative winery, soil properties, water availability, grape quality, harvest selection

Tags

IVES Conference Series | Terroir 2004

Citation

Related articles…

Legacy of land-cover changes on soil erosion and microbiology in Burgundian vineyards

Soils in vineyards are recognized as complex agrosystems whose characteristics reflect complex interactions between natural factors (lithology, climate, slope, biodiversity) and human activities. To date, most of the unknown lies in an incomplete understanding of soil ecosystems, and specifically in the microbial biodiversity even though soil microbiota is involved in many key functions, such as nutrient cycling and carbon sequestration. Soil biological properties are indicative of soil quality. Therefore, understanding how soil communities are related to soil ecosystem functioning is becoming an essential issue for soil strategy conservation. Here, we propose to assess the importance of land-cover history on the present-day microbiological and physico-chemical properties. The studied area was selected in the Burgundian vineyards (Pernand-Vergelesses, Burgundy, France) where land occupation has been reconstructed over the last 40 years. Soil samples were collected in five areas reflecting various land cover history (forest, vineyards, shifting from forest to vineyards). For each area, physico-chemical parameters (pH, C, N, P, grain size) were measured and DNA was extracted to characterize the abundance and diversity of microbial communities. The obtained results show significant differences in the five areas suggesting that present-day microbial molecular biomass and bacterial taxonomic is partly inherited from past land occupation. Over longer period of time, such study of land-uses legacies may help to better assess ecosystem recovery and the impact of management practices for a better soil quality and vineyards sustainability.

Effects of graft quality on growth and grapevine-water relations

Climate change is challenging viticulture worldwide compromising its sustainability due to warmer temperatures and the increased frequency of extreme events. Grafting Vitis vinifera L.

Assessment of climate change impacts on water needs and growing cycle on grapevine in three DOs of NE Spain

This study assessed the suitability of grapevine growing in three DOs (Empordà, Pla de Bages and Penedès) of Catalonia (NE Spain) over the 21st century. For this purpose, an estimation of water needs and agroclimatic and phenological indicators was made. Climate change impacts were estimated at 1 km pixel resolution using temperature and precipitation projections from several general circulation models (GCM) and two climate change scenarios: RCP 4.5 (stabilization scenario) and RCP 8.5 (worst-case scenario). Potential crop evapotranspiration (following FAO procedure) and a daily water balance considering soil water holding capacity were used to estimate actual evapotranspiration of vines and, finally, water needs. Dynamics would be similar in the three DOs studied although the magnitude of impact differs. Water needs would be 2 and 3 times greater (ranging from 0 to more than 1500 m3/ha) than current water needs at both climate change scenarios. Moreover, blooming date would advance from 3 to 6 weeks, harvest date from 1 to 2.5 months, resulting in growing cycles from 10 to 80 days shorter. It should also be noted that frost risk would decrease from 6 to 76%, the number of days with temperatures above 30ºC during ripening would rise from 48 to 500% and tropical nights (minimum temperature >20ºC) at ripening would increase from 28 to 150%, depending on the scenario and the DOs. The impacts of climate change in the three DOs could result in significant limitations for grapevine cultivation and wine production if adaptive strategies are not applied. This result could serve as a basis for the design of specific and particular adaptation strategies to improve and maintain vineyards in the DOs studied and could be extrapolated to similar DOs and regions.

VINIoT – Precision viticulture service

The project VINIoT pursues the creation of a new technological vineyard monitoring service, which will allow companies in the wine sector in the SUDOE space to monitor plantations in real time and remotely at various levels of precision. The system is based on spectral images and an IoT architecture that allows assessing parameters of interest viticulture and the collection of data at a precise scale (level of grape, plant, plot or vineyard) will be designed. In France, three subjects were specifically developed: evaluation of maturity, of water stress, and detection of flavescence dorée. For the evaluation of maturity, it has been decided first to work at the berry scale in the laboratory, then at the bunch scale and finally in the vineyard. The acquisition of the spectral hyperstal image as well as the reference analyzes to measure the maturity, were carried out in the laboratory after harvesting the berries in a maturity monitoring context. This work focuses on a case study to predict sugar content of three different grape varieties: Syrah, Fer Servadou and Mauzac. A robust method called Roboost-PLSR, developed in the framework of this work (Courand et al., 2022), to improve prediction model performance was applied on spectra after the acquirement of hyperspectral images. Regarding the evaluation of water stress, to work with a significant variability in terms of water status, it has been worked first with potted plants under 2 different water regimes. The facilities have allowed the supervision of irrigation and micro-climatic conditions. The regression models on agronomic variables (stomatal conductance, water potential, …) are studied. To detect flavescence dorée, the experimental plan has consisted of work at leaf scale in the laboratory first, and then in the field. To detect the disease from hyper-spectral imaging, a combination of multivariate curve resolution-alternating least squares (MCR-ALS) and factorial discriminant analysis (FDA) was proposed. This strategy proved the potential towards the discrimination of healthy and infected leaves by flavescence dorée based on the use of hyperspectral images (Mas Garcia et al., 2021).

Impact of geographical location on the phenolic profile of minority varieties grown in Spain. II: red grapevines

Because terroir and cultivar are drivers of wine quality, is essential to investigate theirs effects on polyphenolic profile before promoting the implantation of a red minority variety in a specific area. This work, included in MINORVIN project, focuses in the polyphenolic profile of 7 red grapevines minority varieties of Vitis vinifera L. (Morate, Sanguina, Santafe, Terriza Tinta Jeromo Tortozona Tinta) and Tempranillo) from six typical viticulture Spanish areas: Aragón (A1), Cataluña (A2), Castilla la Mancha (A3), Castilla –León (A4), Madrid (A5) and Navarra (A6) of 2020 season. Polyphenolic substances were extracted from grapes. 35 compounds were identified and quantified (mg subtance/kg fresh berry) by HPLC and grouped in anthocyanins (ANT) flavanols (FLAVA), flavonols (FLAVO), hydroxycinnamic (AH), benzoic (BA) acids and stilbenes (ST). Antioxidant activity (AA, mmol TE /g fresh berry) was determined by DPPH method. The results were submitted to a two-way ANOVA to investigate the influence of variety, area and their interaction for each polyphenolic family and cluster analysis was used to construct hierarchical dendrograms, searching the natural groupings among the samples. Sanguina (A3) had the most of total polyphenols while Tempranillo (A5) those of ANT. Sanguina (A2) and (A3) reached the highest values of FLAVO, FLAVA and AA. These two last samples had also the maximum of AA. The effect cultivar and area were significant for all polyphenolic families analyzed. A high variability due to variety (>50%) was observed in FLAVA and the maximum value of variability due to growing area was detected in AA (86.41%), ANT and FLAVO (51%); the interaction variety*zone was significant only for ANT, FLAVO, EST and AA. Finally, dendrograms presented five cluster: i) Sanguina (A2); ii) Sanguina (A3); iii) Tempranillo (A5); iv) Tempranillo (A3); Terriza (A3,A5), Morate (A5,A6); v) Santafé (A1,A6); Tortozona tinta (A1,A3,A6); Tinta Jeromo (A3,A4).