Mar 25, 2022 | IVES Conference Series, Terroir 1996
The Champagne vineyard extends over 35,300 ha under the Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée, of which 30,000 are in production. It mainly covers 3 departments: in order of importance, Marne (68% of the appellation area), Aube (22%) and Aisne (10%), and more anecdotally Haute Marne and Seine and Mame. It is a young vineyard (for more than half of the surface, the winegrowers have the experience of only one generation of vines), and fragmented (more than half of the exploitations extend over less than 1 ha; the average size of a cadastral parcel is 12 ares).
Mar 25, 2022 | IVES Conference Series, Terroir 1996
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.
Mar 25, 2022 | IVES Conference Series, Terroir 1996
Natural factors such as the environment in which the vine is grown play an important role in the quality of the wine. If you want to produce a good wine, it is indeed essential to produce quality grapes. To do this, we must enhance and optimize the terroir effect which, for the moment, plays a role that is not very well known. It is therefore essential, for example, to have scientifically established and well quantifiable relationships in order to have the system of areas of controlled origin accepted. R. Morlat (1989) and G. Seguin (1970) have already carried out studies on the role of certain soil factors on grape quality. In particular, they showed the importance of soil temperature and water content.
Mar 25, 2022 | IVES Conference Series, Terroir 1996
The influence of climatic conditions on the development of the vine and on the quality of the wines no longer needs to be demonstrated at the scale of the vineyard, by the regional climatic characteristics, determining on this scale the viticultural potentialities (Huglin, 1978; Branas, 1946; Riou et al ., 1994); but also on a local scale, at the level of the basic terroir unit (Morlat, 1989), by the landscape differentiation of the natural environment inducing climatic variability within the same vineyard, and partly explaining differences in functioning of the vine, in connection with the processes of maturation and the quality of the wine (Becker, 1977 and 1984; Morlat, 1989 and Lebon, 1993a). According to these authors, the climatic diversity in a wine region constitutes in addition to the edaphic component, an important component of characterization of the Basic Terroir Units (UTB).
Mar 25, 2022 | IVES Conference Series, Terroir 1996
In the Champagne vineyards, spring frosts are the cause of significant variations in the volume of the harvest which are very penalizing for the trade. This variability is reflected both in time (years without frost alternating with years with severe frosts) and in space. Certain sectors of the vineyard are in fact statistically more susceptible to frost than others, but each year no municipality can consider itself immune to this climatic accident. The objective of the study is precisely to analyze the spatial distribution of frost and to determine its main mechanisms, linked to the topography of the hillsides, their orientation but also to regional meteorological variables.
