Terroir 1996 banner
IVES 9 IVES Conference Series 9 La caracterización de los moscateles

La caracterización de los moscateles

Abstract

Ya en 1964 GIOVANNI DALMASSO et alii describiendo el Moscato bianco (12) ponían de manifiesto la dificultad realmente ardua en descubrir “si no todas, por lo menos las más importantes variedades que llevan el nombre de Moscateles …. En efecto, estas son tan numerosas que desde los primeros intentos de taxonomía ampelográfica se vió la necesidad de crear un lugar para uno o más grupos de variedades con sabor de moscatel, o, con mayor precisión, con tal aroma”.
Ciertamente el problema existía ya hace muchos años, porque estas variedades con aroma de “moscatel” se conocían desde la antiguedad y por su sabor habían llamado la atención de los cultivadores y de los estudiosos.
Los viñedos que Varrone, Plinio, Columella recuerdan con el nombre de “Apiane”, por la dulzura del fruto buscado por las abejas (abeja = apis en latín), según la opinión común, debían de ser aquellas variedades que más tarde serán llamadas Moscateles. Ya PORTA (28) en “Villae libri XII” editado en Nápoles en el 1584, recuerda, con reminiscencias sobre todo clásicas, muchas variedades con raices antiguas y se vuelve a referir a esta asociación, además de a aquella (menos conocida) del Moscatellone con la Mocatula de los Geoponicos. Pero luego, además, confirma esta presunta derivación la “Naturalis historia” editada en Roterdam en el 1668 y, más adelante, GALLESIO y el “prudentísimo” MOLON (27) que dice — ” Está ya fuera de dudas que las “Apiane” de los antiguos Georgicos correspondían a nuestros Moscateles”- y así hasta Dalmasso (12).
Pero ¿qué eran estas “Apiane”? COLUMELLA (8) distinguía tres tipos pero — decía- “la más fuerte es una, la que tiene las hojas desnudas”. Efectivamente las otras dos … “revestidas de vellosidad, aunque sean iguales por el aspecto de las hojas y de los sarmientos, se diferencian sin embargo por la calidad del vino …”. Eran variedades muy buscadas por el sabor del vino y ya muy famosas (“atque hae pretiosi gustus celeberrime”).
Además del “celeberrime” queremos subrayar aquí el “se diferencian” porque es un indicio ya de clasificación y caracterización.
Desde entonces tenemos que saltar hasta la Edad Media, periodo en el que “Moscati” y “Moscatelli” reaparecen, porque servidos en las mesas de los príncipes y reyes, pero sobre todo porque PIER DE CRESCENZI (13) en su “Trattato” recuerda además de Schiave, Albana, Tribiana, etc., también las uvas de Muscatel. Evidentemente estos vinos eran tan famosos que PAGANINO BONAFE’ (6), en el 1300, sugería el modo de convertir en Moscateles los vinos que no lo eran, añadiendo durante la fermentación “una grancada di fiori de sambuco sechi a l’umbra” (un puñado de flores de saúco secadas a la sombra).
Los escritos y los cultivos de los Moscateles fueron desde entonces numerosísimos y remitimos a un óptimo trabajo de I. EYNARD et alii del 1981 (22) para tener un cuadro realmente completo sobre este tema.
Nos parece oportuno ahora señalar que el sabor de moscatel sirvió a menudo también para la clasificación de las uvas. Es clásica, por ejemplo, la de las Viti Vinifere de ACERBI (1) que para las dos clases: Uvas tintas y Uvas blancas establece dos subclases: con sabor a moscatel y con sabor simple.
Pero es sobre todo en el 1868 MENDOLA (26) quién, precisamente para clasificar el grupo de los Moscateles, propone los tres siguientes subgrupos en función de las características del aroma.

DOI:

Publication date: February 24, 2022

Issue: Terroir 2000 

Type: Article

Authors

A. Calò, A. Costacurta., R. Flamini and N. Milani

Istituto Sperimentale per la Viticultura
Viale XXVIII Aprile, 26 — 31015 Conegliano (Treviso) Italia

Tags

IVES Conference Series | Terroir 2000

Citation

Related articles…

A predictive model of spatial Eca variability in the vineyard to support the monitoring of plant status

[lwp_divi_breadcrumbs home_text="IVES" use_before_icon="on" before_icon="||divi||400" module_id="publication-ariane" _builder_version="4.19.4" _module_preset="default" module_text_align="center" module_font_size="16px" text_orientation="center"...

Permanent cover cropping with reduced tillage increased resiliency of wine grape vineyards to climate change

Majority of California’s vineyards rely on supplemental irrigation to overcome abiotic stressors. In the context of climate change, increases in growing season temperatures and crop evapotranspiration pose a risk to adaptation of viticulture to climate change. Vineyard cover crops may mitigate soil erosion and preserve water resources; but there is a lack of information on how they contribute to vineyard resiliency under tillage systems. The aim of this study was to identify the optimum combination of cover crop sand tillage without adversely affecting productivity while preserving plant water status. Two experiments in two contrasting climatic regions were conducted with two cover crops, including a permanent short stature grass (P. bulbosa hybrid), barley (Hordeum spp), and resident vegetation under till vs. no-till systems in a Ruby Cabernet (V. vinifera spp.) (Fresno) and a Cabernet Sauvingon (Napa) vineyard. Results indicated that permanent grass under no-till preserved plant available water until E-L stage 17. Consequently, net carbon assimilation of the permanent grass under no-till system was enhanced compared to those with barley and resident vegetation. On the other hand, the barley under no-till system reduced grapevine net carbon assimilation during berry ripening that led to lower content of nonstructural carbohydrates in shoots at dormancy. Components of yield and berry composition including flavonoid profile at either site were not adversely affected by factors studied. Switching to a permanent cover crop under a no-till system also provided a 9% and 3% benefit in cultural practices costs in Fresno and Napa, respectively. The results of this work provides fundamental information to growers in preserving resiliency of vineyard systems in hot and warm climate regions under context of climate change.

Elevational range shifts of mountain vineyards: Recent dynamics in response to a warming climate

Increasing temperatures worldwide are expected to cause a change in spatial distribution of plant species along elevational gradients and there are already observable shifts to higher elevations as a consequence of climate change for many species. Not only naturally growing plants, but also agricultural cultivations are subject to the effects of climate change, as the type of cultivation and the economic viability depends largely on the prevailing climatic conditions. A shift to higher elevations therefore represents a viable adaptation strategy to climate change, as higher elevations are characterized by lower temperatures. This is especially important in the case of viticulture because a certain wine-style can only be achieved under very specific climatic conditions. Although there are several studies investigating climatic suitability within winegrowing regions or longitudinal shifts of winegrowing areas, little is known about how fast vineyards move to higher elevations, which may represent a viable strategy for winegrowers to maintain growing conditions and thus wine-style, despite the effects of climate change. We therefore investigated the change in the spatial distribution of vineyards along an elevational gradient over the past 20 years in the mountainous wine-growing region of Alto Adige (Italy). A dataset containing information about location and planting year of more than 26000 vineyard parcels and 30 varieties was used to perform this analysis. Preliminary results suggest that there has been a shift to higher elevations for vineyards in general (from formerly 700m to currently 850 m a.s.l., with extreme sites reaching 1200 m a.s.l.), but also that this development has not been uniform across different varieties and products (i.e. vitis vinifera vs hybrid varieties and still vssparkling wines). This is important for climate change adaptation as well as for rural development. Mountain areas, especially at mid to high elevations, are often characterized by severe land abandonment which can be avoided to some degree if economically viable and sustainable land management strategies are available.

Mapping and tracking canopy size with VitiCanopy

Understanding vineyard variability to target management strategies, apply inputs efficiently and deliver consistent grape quality to the winery is essential. However, despite inherent vineyard variability, the majority are managed as if they are uniform. VitiCanopy is a simple, grower-friendly tool for precision/digital viticulture that allows users to collect and interpret objective spatial information about vineyard performance. After four years of field and market research, an upgraded VitiCanopy has been created to achieve a more streamlined, technology-assisted vine monitoring tool that provides users with a set of superior new features, which could significantly improve the way users monitor their grapevines. These new features include:
• New user interface
• User authentication
• Batch analysis of multiple images
• Ease the learning curve through enhanced help features
• Reporting via the creation of colour maps that will allow users to assess the spatial differences in canopies within a vineyard.
Use-case examples are presented to demonstrate the quantification and mapping of vineyard variability through objective canopy measurements, ground-truthing of remotely sensed measurements, monitoring of crop conditions, implementation of disease and water management decisions as well as creating a history of each site to forecast quality. This intelligent tool allows users to manage grapevines and make informed management choices to achieve the desired production targets and remain profitable.

Climate ethnography and wine environmental futures

Globalisation and climate change have radically transformed world wine production upsetting the established order of wine ecologies. Ecological risks and the future of traditional agricultural systems are widely debated in anthropology, but very little is understood of the particular challenges posed by climate change to viticulture which is seen by many as the canary in the coalmine of global agriculture. Moreover, wine as a globalised embedded commodity provides a particularly telling example for the study of climate change having already attracted early scientific attention. Studies of climate change in viticulture have focused primarily on the production of systematic models of adaptation and vulnerability, while the human and cultural factors, which are key to adaptation and sustainable futures, are largely missing. Climate experts have been unanimous in recognising the urgent need for a better understanding of the complex dynamics that shape how climate change is experienced and responded to by human systems. Yet this call has not yet been addressed. Climate ethnography, coined by the anthropologist Susan Crate (2011), aims to bridge this growing disjuncture between climate science and everyday life through the exploration of the social meaning of climate change. It seeks to investigate the confrontation of its social salience in different locations and under different environmental guises (Goodman 2018: 340). By understanding how wine producers make sense of the world (and the environment) and act in it, it proposes to focus on the co-production of interdisciplinary knowledge by identifying and foreshadowing problems (Goodman 2018: 342; Goodman & Marshall 2018). It seeks to offer an original, transformative and contrasted perspective to climate change scenarios by investigating human agency -individual or collective- in all its social, political and cultural diversity. An anthropological approach founded on detailed ethnographies of wine production is ideally placed to address economic, social and cultural disruptions caused by the emergence of these new environmental challenges. Indeed, the community of experts in environmental change have recently called for research that will encompass the human dimension and for more broad-based, integrated through interdisciplinarity, useful knowledge (Castree & al 2014). My paper seeks to engage with climate ethnography and discuss what it brings to the study of wine environmental futures while exploring the limitations of the anthropological environmental approach.