Vicente Gómez-Miguel

By Álvaro Martínez and Vicente D. Gómez-Miguel

Since ancient times, wines from specific regions have been valued and studies related to terroir focus on the elements of the environment that affect wine production. This paper presents the terroir variations between vineyards and within the same vineyard, as well as its influence on grape production. A soil zoning is carried out, starting from an aerial photointerpretation (FIA) and studying each soil sector based on its depth analysis (pits). This zoning of the environmental homogeneous units (EHU) is redefined with the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), resulting in the proposed terroir zoning. The temporal stability of the terroir zoning has been tested through the representation of the NDVI during 3 years and the response of the vineyard (yield, vegetative growth, and grape composition) during 4 years. The relationship between the EHUs, soil epipedon particularly, and the response of the vineyard is analyzed from an agglomerative hierarchical clustering (AHC) prior to a principal component analysis (PCA). There is an EHU that is shown to be more vigorous, associated with a material deposition area whose main series of soil is fine-loamy, mixed, mesic, Typic Xerofluvent. This microterroir produces grapes with low sugar content, high acidity, and low levels of polyphenolic compounds, including anthocyanins.

Part of the book: Plant Communities and Their Environment