Winemaking areas recognized as protected designations of origin (PDOs) shape important economic, environmental and cultural values that are tied to closely defined geographic locations. To preserve wine products and wine-growing practices adopted in different PDOs these areas are strictly regulated by legal specifications. However, quality viticulture is increasingly under pressure from climate change, which is altering the local conditions of many winegrowing areas. Therefore, maintaining traditional wine products will require the adoption of tailored adaptation strategies, including possible changes in the legal regulation of protected wines. To this end, it is necessary to have a comprehensive knowledge on PDOs including their extension, products and allowed practices. While there have been efforts to build databases that summarize the characteristics for individual wine PDO areas and to quantify the related effects of climate change, much information is still included only in the official documentation of the EU geographical indication register and has never been collected in a comprehensive manner. With this study we aim at filling this gap by building a spatial inventory of European wine PDOs that supports decision making in viticulture in the context of climate change. To map and characterize European wine PDOs, we analysed their legal documents and extracted relevant information useful for climate change adaptation. The output consists of a comprehensive geographical dataset that identifies the boundaries of all 1200 European wine PDOs at unprecedented spatial resolution and includes a set of legally binding regulations, such as authorized vine varieties, maximum yields and planting density. The inventory will allow researchers to analyse the impacts of climate change on European wine PDOs and support decision makers in developing tailored adaptation strategies. This includes, among others, the evaluation of new vineyard site selection, the expansion of cultivated varieties or the authorization of irrigation in vineyards.
Authors: Sebastian Candiago1,2, Simon Tscholl2,3, Leonardo Bassani2, Helder Fraga4 and Lukas Egarter Vigl2
1Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Department of Economics, Venezia, Italy
2Institute for Alpine Environment, Eurac Research, Bozen/Bolzano, Italy
3Department of Ecology, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria
4Centre for the Research and Technology of Agro-Environmental and Biological Sciences, University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, Vila Real, Portugal
Email: sebastian.candiago@unive.it
Keywords: adaptation, climate change, geographical indication, geospatial data
