Learning from remote sensing data: a case study in the Trentino region 

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.

The trial aims to improve the protection and management of the soil, the well-being of the plant and the quality of production in the wine supply chain organic and biodynamic, using an innovative product “ZEOWINE” resulting from the composting of waste of the wine and zeolite supply chain.

For many years, enological research has developed commercial formulates of yeast derivatives as stabilizing agents and technological adjuvants in winemaking. These products are obtained from yeast by autolytic, plasmolytic, or hydrolytic processes that liberate many macromolecules from the yeast cell, principally polysaccharides and oligosaccharides and most specifically mannoproteins that are well known for their ability to improve tartaric stability and to reduce the occurrence of protein hazes (Ángeles Pozo-Bayón et al., 2009; Charpentier & Feuillat, 1992; Morata et al., 2018; Palomero et al., 2009).

The vineyards placed in the municipal areas of Fuente de Piedra, Humilladero and Mollina constitute a wine-growing important area of the “Zona Norte” of the province of Málaga.

Nitrogen (N2) is critical in grape berries, especially in organic wine making. After intake, N2 follows various metabolic and allocation routes and, from veraison, partly reallocates into berries. Water deficit affects the N2 nutrition due to a poor diffusion in soil solution and vascular mobilisation. Also, affects photosynthesis and the energy needed for metabolism, whose extent would depend on the stomatal sensitivity of the plant. We have assessed the effect of a moderate water deficit from pea size, in 3 years old field grown potted plants of Chardonnay (CH) and Cabernet Sauvignon (CS), differing in stomatal sensitivity, on the N2 status of plant parts. Water deficit reduced photosynthesis, leaf area and fresh and dry plant mass along the season, but up to a higher extent in CS.