Spatial analysis of wine Protected Designation of Origin areas in France

Abstract

One concrete manifestation of the concept of terroir is Geographical Indications. Protected Designation of Origin (PDO), a category of GI, is based on strict geographical boundaries and binding, controlled production rules. Here, we study the geographical characteristics of 1,255 designation (DA) that correspond to one or more grape production areas defined within 355 PDOs in France’s eight major wine-growing regions, whose boundaries are available in digital format. The extent of most DAs is between 200 m and 21.6 km (10th and 90th percentiles). The median area of DAs is 12.6 ha, which does not fully reflect the great diversity of spatial structure across French wine-growing regions. Bourgogne has 841 (67%) DAs, while Corsica has only 9. The elevation of PDO areas varies from -12 to 902 m above sea level (average = 149 m). The median slope is 8.7% and reaches 149% in southeastern France. While north-facing slopes dominate appellations in southern France, they account for 8% of appellation areas in Alsace and 12% in Beaujolais-Jura-Savoie, where one might have expected these potentially later-ripening areas not to be delimited. The role of relief in the spatial structuring of appellations does not appear to be a determining factor in the structuring of the appellation system in France, which seems to be governed more by historical heritage and practices in place during the emergence of appellations at the beginning of the 20th century.

References

Candiago, S., Tscholl, S., Bassani, L., Fraga, H., & Egarter Vigl, L. (2022). A geospatial inventory of regulatory information for wine protected designations of origin in Europe. Scientific Data, 9(1), 394. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-022-01513-0

Conrad, O., Bechtel, B., Bock, M., Dietrich, H., Fischer, E., Gerlitz, L., Wehberg, J., Wichmann, V., & Böhner, J. (2015). System for Automated Geoscientific Analyses (SAGA) v. 2.1.4. Geoscientific Model Development, 8(7), 1991–2007. https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-8-1991-2015

de Serres, O. (1600). Le théâtre d’agriculture et mésnage des champs. Metayer. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k52175n

Flutet, G., Franchois, C., & Grelier, A. (2014). Une procédure de mise à jour des zones AOC. 1, 1–5.

Fraga, H., Malheiro, A. C., Moutinho-Pereira, J., Jones, G. V., Alves, F., Pinto, J. G., & Santos, J. A. (2013). Very high resolution bioclimatic zoning of Portuguese wine regions: Present and future scenarios. Regional Environmental Change, 14(1), 295–306. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-013-0490-y

Garcia, J.-P., Chevrier, S., Dufraisse, A., Foucher, M., & Steinmann, R. (2010). Le vignoble gallo-romain de Gevrey-Chambertin « Au-dessus-de Bergis », Côte-d’Or (Ier-IIe s. ap. J.-C.): Modes de plantation et de conduite de vignes antiques en Bourgogne. Revue archéologique de l’Est, Tome 59-2, 505–537.

Jacquet, O. (2024). Le goût des vins d’origine: Genèse, construction et triomphe des AOC au XXe siècle. Editions Universitaires de Dijon.

Oke, T. R. (1987). Boundary Layer Climates (2nd ed.). Routledge.

Ollat, N., Zito, S., Richard, Y., Aigrain, P., Brugière, F., Duchêne, E., Cortazar-Atauri, I. G. D., Gautier, J., Giraud-Héraud, E., Hannin, H., Touzard, J.-M., & Bois, B. (2021). La diversité des vignobles français face au changement climatique: Simulations climatiques et prospective participative. Climatologie, 18, 3. https://doi.org/10.1051/climat/202118003

Remenyi, T. A., Rollins, D. A., Love, P. T., Earl, N. O., Bindoff, N. L., & Harris, R. M. B. (2019). Australia’s Wine Future—A Climate Atlas. University of Tasmania.

Syndicat des vignobles de la Côte Vermeille, & GDA Cru Banyuls Albères. (2019). Dossier de reconnaissance officielle des spécificités des Vignobles de montagne: Vignoble de la cote Vermeille (p. 8). https://opera-connaissances.chambres-agriculture.fr/doc_num.php?explnum_id=154018

Tscholl, S., Candiago, S., Marsoner, T., Fraga, H., Giupponi, C., & Egarter Vigl, L. (2024). Climate resilience of European wine regions. Nature Communications, 15(1), 6254. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-50549-w

Vaudour, E., Costantini, E., Jones, G. V., & Mocali, S. (2015). An overview of the recent approaches to terroir functional modelling, footprinting and zoning. SOIL, 1(1), 287–312. https://doi.org/10.5194/soil-1-287-2015

Zevenbergen, L. W., & Thorne, C. R. (1987). Quantitative analysis of land surface topography. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, 12(1), 47–56. https://doi.org/10.1002/esp.3290120107

Zito, S., Pergaud, J., Richard, Y., Castel, T., Roux, R. L., Cortázar-Atauri, I. G. de, Quenol, H., & Bois, B. (2023). Projected impacts of climate change on viticulture over French wine regions using downscaled CMIP6 multi-model data. OENO One, 57(2), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.20870/oeno-one.2023.57.2.7441

Acknowledgments

This work was not funded and was carried out by the authors of this article.