lördag 11 december 2010

Best Climate for Growing Grapes

As far as climate is concerned, the classic European wine regions are mostly near to the margins of successful wine cultivation - where vines are most at risk from the weather.

The growing season in Europe can be a nail-biting experience from start to finish. Too much rain dilutes the flavor of the grapes; too little sunshine results in unripe grapes. Hazards such as spring frost, poor weather when the vines are flowering (preventing the fruit from setting satisfactorily), hail, mildew, and fall rot are always in the cards. Sometimes even drought can be a problem, especially in those regions where irrigation is frowned on, and largely banned, because of the potential to use it to increase yields and thus dilute quality.
It's not only Europe that suffers: this vineyard, in Mendoza, Argentina, was stripped of its foliage by midsummer hail.

Mesoclimates
The Old World grower tends to look for sites where the severity of the climate is moderated in some way -for example, near a body of water that warms the adjoining land, on a slope sheltered from the prevailing wind, or in a frost-free pocket above the valley floor. Sites such as these are described as having a mesoclimate (a climate within a climate). And if previous generations haven't disclosed which vineyard or slope is the most favored, and which the least reliable, experience will soon reveal all, as it does for any other kind of farmer. Yet, however well a site is selected, and however carefully the vines are tended through the seasons, there will always be difficult years in these marginal regions, resulting in disappointing wines.

Climatic extremes
Warm regions are not without their threats. Argentina suffered badly from El Nino in 1998; the Hunter Valley in Australia is prone to harvesttime rain; Western Australia and New Zealand sometimes suffer the effects of passing cyclones; and a variety of abnormal weather conditions made 2000 an unusually difficult vintage for some of South Australia's key regions. But these are the exception, not the rule. Whereas the Old World hopes for good weather, the New World expects it. The latter's problem is more likely to be too much warmth too soon, resulting in grapes that are ripe before they have developed much flavor.

So, the Old World grower looks for an extra degree of sunshine or frost protection, while the quality-oriented grower in the southern hemisphere and California increasingly looks for the cooler site up in the hills, the one that catches chilling sea breezes or morning fogs, or the one where the temperature drops lower at night. The result of all this is that the world's finest wines tend to come from the warmer years in favored northern Europe vineyards and, increasingly, from those vineyards in the New World that are cooler and more European than the average.

1 kommentar:

  1. thanks for this topic, it really helped...but unfortunately as much as I need, could you expand on the geographic area? which height above the sea is perfect to buy the land? should it be in a valley? or on top of a hill or mountain? what's the perfect degrees to grow up the vines?

    SvaraRadera