Caractérisation du terroir en Espagne : méthodologie de l’évaluation et de la validation

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in characterizing the ecological environment of vineyard production, and the growing need to delimit and characterize with precision the different homogeneous viticultural units. This has allowed the development of new studies which have as their objective the Vineyard Zoning. The delimitation and characterization of wine-growing areas poses specific problems in Spain, not only linked to the specific characteristics of the territory, but also to the size, distribution and index of viticultural occupation in the designations of origin.

In this work we try to describe the methodology that has been applied to the Denomination of Origin Ribera del Duero (325,000 Ha and 12,000 Ha of vineyard) and to the Qualified DO Rioja (300,000 Ha and 50,000 Ha of vineyard) with the objective of systematically and analytically defining homogeneous units, in which the viticultural vocation can be expressed quantitatively with the resulting comparative discussions (Sotés and Gómez-Miguel, 1994, 1997).