Terroir 1996 banner
IVES 9 IVES Conference Series 9 Cultivo de la Malvasia en Tenerife

Cultivo de la Malvasia en Tenerife

Abstract

El archipiélago Canario, conocido en el pasado como las Islas del Vino, fue una gran potencia en la elaboración y comercialización del vino, sobre todo de caldos elaborados con la variedad Malvasía.
Los aborígenes de Canarias desconocían el cultivo de la vid, y fue con la colonización cuando este cultivo se implantó en las islas; se comenzó por Fuerteventura y Lanzarote para irse extendiendo a todas las islas según se iban conquistando.
A mediados del siglo XVI los caldos producidos en las islas tenían un gran renombre en las cortes europeas, y en las colonias americanas, africanas, etc. Destacando sin lugar a dudas la Malvasía, creando un precedente por su calidad y tipicidad de la Denominación de Origen: el Canary.
En 1666 comenzó la decadencia de este valioso mercado debido a la independencia de Portugal, las leyes de navegación inglesas, los altos costes de producción y la disminución de la calidad.
A finales del siglo XVIII comenzó a resurgir el sector aunque no con tanto esplendor como en el pasado.
Sobre el 1582, con la creación de puertos francos en Canarias, y la entrada de enfermedades como el oidium y el mildium, el mercado se volvió a hundir desviando la agricultura al cultivo de la tunera con la cochinilla, el tabaco, la caña de azúcar para elaborar ron y la platanera, manteniendo esta situación hasta los días actuales en los que el cultivo de la vid está presente de forma residual en las zonas de medianías, y en su mayoría con cultivos asociados de papas, millo, frutales, etc.; en crecimiento notable en la década de los 90 gracias al Plan Insular Vitivinícola creado en la isla, que ha hecho resurgir la vid en general, aunque la Malvasía todavía está muy rezagada quedando pequeñas plantaciones en la zona de Icod de los Vinos, Tacoronte y en la zona de Abona, sobre la cual vamos a hablar de la experiencia que llevamos realizando durante dos años en la Bodega Cumbres de Abona en su finca experimental.

DOI:

Publication date: February 24, 2022

Issue: Terroir 2000 

Type: Article

Tags

IVES Conference Series | Terroir 2000

Citation

Related articles…

Effect of fertigation strategies to adapt PGI Côtes de Gascogne production to hot vintage

The development of fertigation could be a possible solution to adapt PGI Côtes de Gascogne (south-western France) wine production to climate change. The goal would be to limit the negative effects of water stress on yield performance expectation (around 15 tons per hectare) and to make the use of fertilizers more efficient. This study aimed to compare the effects of three strategies of water and minerals supply on grapes and wines qualities. Two fertigation practices were compared to a rainfed control which is the current standard of the local grape growing production. The fertilizers (nitrogen and potassium) were (i) fully brought by irrigation pipe during the season, (ii) partially brought by irrigation pipe and partially on the soil or (iii) fully brought on the soil at the beginning of the season for the non-irrigated control (local standard). The trial was run on cv. Colombard trained on spur pruned with vertical shoot positioning system on a sandy-silty-clay soil over the 2020 vintage which was particularly hot for the region. Moderate to strong water deficit appeared during the growing period of the berries and held on after veraison. Irrigation strategies allowed for maintaining grapevine without water deficit and being significantly different from the control water status. Grapevine with fully or partial fertigation strategies produced 25% more yield mainly due to the increase of the bunch weight. Also, the fully fertigation showed the best ratio between yield and maturity and brought 30% less of fertilizers (both nitrogen and potassium) than the two other strategies. Finally, the analysis of aromatic compounds in Colombard wines, varietal thiols family, showed the same level of concentrations for the 3 treatments, confirming that the yield performance did not impact the aromatic potential in this trial.

Upscaling the integrated terroir zoning through digital soil mapping: a case study in the Designation of Origin Campo de Borja

homogeneous zones by intersecting several partial zonings of major factors that influence vineyard growth. Each of them follows specific process from their corresponding disciplines. Soil zoning specifically refers to a Soil Resource Inventory map that has traditionally been generated by conventional soil mapping methods. These methods have shortcomings in reaching fine cartographic and categorical details and involve significant expenses, which undermines their applicability. A new framework named Digital Soil Mapping has introduced quantitative models by statistical techniques to establish soil-landscape relationships and is able to provide intensive scale cartography.

In the present study, a microzoning at 1:10.000 scale is generated from an initial zoning, where the conventional soil map with polytaxic map units is replaced by a new one from digital techniques that disaggregates them. The comparison between the zonings considers a quantitative evaluation of capability for each Homogeneous Terroir Unit by means of the Viticultural Quality Index and its categorization based on its distribution by map. The spatial intersection of both maps gives rise to a confusion matrix in which the flows of class variations after the substitution are assessed.

The results show a five-fold increase in the number of Homogeneous Terroir Units identified and a larger differentiation among them, evidenced by a wider range in the capability index distribution. Both elements are accompanied by an increase in the detection of areas of higher potential within previously undervalued uniform zones.These features are a direct effect of the improvements brought by Digital Soil Mapping techniques and would verify the advantages of their implementation in the Integrated Terroir zoning. Eventually, such new highly detailed terroir units would benefit precision viticulture and sustainable management practices.

Terroir analysis and its complexity

Terroir is not only a geographical site, but it is a more complex concept able to express the “collective knowledge of the interactions” between the environment and the vines mediated through human action and “providing distinctive characteristics” to the final product (OIV 2010). It is often treated and accepted as a “black box”, in which the relationships between wine and its origin have not been clearly explained. Nevertheless, it is well known that terroir expression is strongly dependent on the physical environment, and in particular on the interaction between soil-plant and atmosphere system, which influences the grapevine responses, grapes composition and wine quality. The Terroir studying and mapping are based on viticultural zoning procedures, obtained with different levels of know-how, at different spatial and temporal scales, empiricism and complexity in the description of involved bio-physical processes, and integrating or not the multidisciplinary nature of the terroir. The scientific understanding of the mechanisms ruling both the vineyard variability and the quality of grapes is one of the most important scientific focuses of terroir research. In fact, this know-how is crucial for supporting the analysis of climate change impacts on terroir resilience, identifying new promised lands for viticulture, and driving vineyard management toward a target oenological goal. In this contribution, an overview of the last findings in terroir studies and approaches will be shown with special attention to the terroir resilience analysis to climate change, facing the use and abuse of terroir concept and new technology able to support it and identifying the terroir zones.

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.

Characterization of variety-specific changes in bulk stomatal conductance in response to changes in atmospheric demand and drought stress

In wine growing regions around the world, climate change has the potential to affect vine transpiration and overall vineyard water use due to related changes in atmospheric demand and soil water deficits. Grapevines control their transpiration in response to a changing environment by regulating conductance of water through the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum. Most vineyard water use models currently estimate vine transpiration by applying generic crop coefficients to estimates of reference evapotranspiration, but this does not account for changes in vine conductance associated with water stress, nor differences thought to exist between varieties. The response of bulk stomatal conductance to daily weather variability and seasonal drought stress was studied on Cabernet-Sauvignon, Merlot, Tempranillo, Ugni blanc, and Semillon vines in a non-irrigated vineyard in Bordeaux France. Whole vine sap flow, temperature and humidity in the vine canopy, and net radiation absorbed by the vine canopy were measured on 15-minute intervals from early July through mid-September 2020, together with periodic measurement of leaf area, canopy porosity, and predawn leaf water potential. From this data, bulk stomatal conductance was calculated on 15-minute intervals, and multiple regression analysis was performed to identify key variables and their relative effect on conductance. Attention was focused on addressing multicollinearity and time-dependency in the explanatory variables and developing regression models that were readily interpretable. Variability of vapor pressure deficit over the day, and predawn water potential over the season explained much of the variability in conductance, with relative differences in response coefficients observed across the five varieties. By characterizing this conductance response, the dynamics of vine transpiration can be better parameterized in vineyard water use modeling of current and future climate scenarios.