Terroir 2016 banner
IVES 9 IVES Conference Series 9 Irrigation and terroir: two opposite concepts? Point of view of international experts and french consumers

Irrigation and terroir: two opposite concepts? Point of view of international experts and french consumers

Abstract

At long term, qualitative irrigation seems to be the most systematic, if not the best, cultural practice for dealing with climate change and yield increases without decrease grape quality. Given this backdrop, the acceptance or irrigation within the frameworks of the terroir definition takes a central place. Consistently, the objective of this work is to evaluate this compatibility. Since irrigation is basically a social practice, it is important to understand it from a sociological point of view.

To meet this commitment, a qualitative questionnaire was implemented: standard personal interviews with no frequency (subject surveyed once) with a multi-topic research (omnibus research). 18 participants to the 19th GiESCO Meeting were selected as participants to the questionnaire. In a second instance, a quantitative questionnaire was evaluated: depth or intensive questionnaire with close-ended questions. In parallel, 512 French wine consumers participate to an Internet survey. This way, subject was approached from a twofold perspective: qualified researchers and French wine regular consumers.

Results show that surveyed expert seems to agree (in 63% of cases) with the idea of not changing a terroir by adding water under a controlled management of the water status in the vine. Level of agreement seems to be related with expert’s provenance and therefore expert’s observations in their local weather. Finally, concerning consumer’s approach, the level of implication in wine seems to play a role in accepting irrigation; consumers not implicated on wine don’t have a formed opinion whereas implicated consumers showed both; for and against a reasoned irrigation as a tool to deal against climate change. Moreover, within qualified consumers, age could serve for explaining the acceptance of irrigation: young (≤35 years old) and medium consumers (from 36 to 64 years old) were more likely to accept irrigation and a different grape variety to preserve wine quality.

DOI:

Publication date: June 23, 2020

Issue: Terroir 2016

Type: Article

Authors

Santiago ALVAREZ GEI (1,2), Hernán OJEDA (1), Cécile COULON-LEROY (2)

(1) INRA, UE999 Pech Rouge, F-11430 Gruissan, France
(2) Unité GRAPPE, ESA, INRA, Comue UBL, 55 rue Rabelais BP 30748, F-49007 Angers, France

Keywords

Irrigation, Terroir, International experts, French consumers

Tags

IVES Conference Series | Terroir 2016

Citation

Related articles…

Extreme vintages affect grape varieties differently: a case study from a cool climate wine region

Eger wine region is located on the northern border of grapevine cultivation zone. In the cool climate, terroir selection is one of the foundations of quality wine making. However, climate change will have a significant impact on these high value-added vineyards. This study presents a case study from 2021 and 2022 with the investigation of three grape varieties (Kadarka, Syrah, Furmint). The experiment was conducted in a steep-sloped vineyard (Nagy-Eged hill) with a southern exposure.

Downscaling of remote sensing time series: thermal zone classification approach in Gironde region

In viticulture, the challenges of local climate modelling are multiple: taking into account the local environment, fine temporal and spatial scales, reliable time series of climate data, ease of implementation and reproducibility of the method. At the local scale, recent studies have demonstrated the contribution of spatialization methods for ground-based climate observation data considering topographic factors such as altitude, slope, aspect, and geographic coordinates (Le Roux et al, 2017; De Rességuier et al, 2020). However, these studies have shown questions in terms of the reproducibility and sustainability of this type of climate study. In this context, we evaluated the potential of MODIS thermal satellite images validated with ground-based climate data (Morin et al, 2020). Previous studies have been encouraging, but questions remain to be explored at the regional scale, particularly in the dynamics of the massive use of bioclimatic indices to classify the climate of wine regions. The results at the local scale were encouraging, but this approach was tested in the current study at the regional scale. Several objectives were set: 1) to evaluate the downscaling method for land surface temperature time series, 2) to identify regional thermal structure variations. We used weekly minimum and maximum surface temperature time series acquired by MODIS satellites at a spatial resolution of 1000 m and downscaled at 500 m using topographical variables. Two types of analyses were performed:

Under-row low competitive herbaceous cover: A sustainable alternative to herbicide in vineyards

Weeds are undesirable plants in agroecosystems as they compete with the crop for essential resources such as light, water and nutrients, compromising the final yield and its quality.

Zonificación vitícola y aplicación a la D.O. Montilla-Moriles, usando como referencia la variedad ‘Pedro Ximenes’

Se señalaron 28 parcelas, en la zona de D.O. Montilla-Moriles, repartidas por toda la superficie de viñedo, de ellas 12 se localizan en las Zonas de calidad Superior, en los términos municipales de Montilla

Effect of environmentally friendly vineyard protection strategies on yeast ecology during fermentation

AIM: Currently, an increasing concern from governments and consumers about environmental sustainability of wine production provides new challenges for innovation in wine industry. Accordingly, the application of more-environmentally friendly vineyard treatments against fungal diseases (powdery and downy mildew) could have a cascading impact on yeast ecology of wine production.