Cover page designed by Menelaos Kokkinos Cover page pictures taken from (top-bottom): http://www.roagna.com/pagine/eng/approfondimenti/terroir.lasso http://foodzie.com/discover/guides/tea-guide-the-scoop-on-tea-terroir/# http://www.citytoursbarcelona.com/wine tour priorat.html http://www.ildogliani.it/en/il clima.php http://www.heymann-loewenstein.com/Neu/Terroir En/TE von 100.htm Copyright c 2011, by E. Boufidou, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or other- wise, without the prior written permission of the author E. Boufidou, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology, P.O. Box 5048, 2628 CN, Delft, The Netherlands. Typesetting system: LATEX. Printed in Greece by “International”, Konstantinou Melenikou 5, 54635, Thessaloniki i Towards understanding the DOQ Priorat terroirs: A multivariate GIS analysis Thesis, submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Geomatics Effrosyni Boufidou Born in Thessaloniki, Greece Delft University of Technology Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences Stevinweg 1, 2628 CN Delft, Tel: +31 (0)15 27 85440 http://citg.tudelft.nl/ Geological Institute of Catalonia Department of Engineering Geology and Hazards Balmes 209-211, E-08006 Barcelona, Tel: +34 (0)93 55 38430 http://www.igc.cat/ ii iii Towards understanding the DOQ Priorat terroirs: A multivariate GIS analysis Effrosyni Boufidou Student number: 4031881 [email protected] Thesis committee members: Academic supervision: Prof. Nick van de Giesen Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences Department of Water Resources Management [email protected] Delft University of Technology Dr. Sisi Zlatanova OTB Research Institute for the Built Environment Section of GIS Technology [email protected] Dr. Leon van Paassen Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences Department of Geotechnology [email protected] External supervision: Ir. Aline Concha i Dimas Department of Engineering Geology and Risks Geological Institute of Catalonia [email protected] Geological Institute of Catalonia iv Executive summary The notion of terroir covers the interaction between the natural, the cultural conditions and the grape vine itself relative to the character of the final wine product. It is about a dynamic chain whose factors get different weights in each wine region and this results in the typicality of the different terroir wine products. The Old World wine regions have been for many years occupied with the terroir research in order to explain the uniqueness and the specificities of their wine products. Nowadays, more and more wine regions are interested in such kind of investigations in order to highlight their distinct products, expose their originality and get a place in the wine market. DOQ Priorat is located in South Catalonia in Spain and is a wine region that has recently been nominated a label of originality for its products. Such a denomination made the region’s cultivators interested to learn more about the natural conditions of the area in a try to explain the success of their products and with the prospect to preserve the quality of their wines. In these terms, Geographical Information Systems (GIS), providing the ability for spatial, statistical analysis and visualisation, have been considered important tools for the DOQ Priorat’s natural conditions’ analysis and diverse terroir investigation. Previous research has indicated topography, the soil properties and the climate of a region to define the natural conditions of a region and therefore being the factors of interest/effect in the wine terroir. These three factors can be described by specific attributes. For instance, elevation and ground inclination for topography, PH and texture for soil, temperature and precipitation for climate. The distribution of such attributes and many others that characterize the aforementioned natural conditions, has been studied in the DOQ Priorat territory in order to examine the resemblance of the DOQ Priorat vine growing conditions to the conditions that are considered beneficial from international research. The correspondence of the DOQ Priorat conditions to the standards for vine growing has been treated by means of a multivariate GIS analysis. The DOQ Priorat topographic and soil at- tributes have been evaluated relative to their suitability for vine growing and different suitability classes have been defined. Moreover, the growing season temperature distribution and its ca- pability to define conditions of viability for specific grape varieties, has been used to define two major terroir units in DOQ Priorat. The suitability of the DOQ Priorat land for cultivation of specific varieties has been assessed through the topographic-soil composite suitability in relation to the teroir units defined. DOQ Priorat’s greatest extend has been classified in intermediate and intermediate to high vine growing suitability classes relative to its topography and soil conditions. The shallow and dry soils as well as the steep slopes visited in the area seem to contradict to what is considered beneficial for vine growing. In terms of climate however, the whole area presents ideal conditions for a wide variety of grape cultivations whereas most of these varieties proposed to fit the area are already cultivated today. Even though the current vineyard cultivations still present conditions of intermediate and intermediate-high suitability relative to what is v vi considered beneficial from international vine growing research, the quality of the wines produced in DOQ Priorat is indisputable; there are therefore some unique features in the DOQ Priorat terroirs. The DOQ Priorat vines are cultivated in higher elevations and in soils shallower and less fine textured than what is considered to fit for vine growing internationally. That is what gives the DOQ Priorat wines their unique character and these are finally the conditions that are considered ideal for Priorat wines. Such a conclusion, leads to the confirmation of the dynamic nature of terroir, whose factors and attributes cannot be strictly defined and quantified for every wine region. New vine growing standards could be defined for several wine regions relative to their specificities whereas it is mostly the try, the result and the experience that define good and bad terroirs. The DOQ Priorat case has been a very nice example of a region going against the vine cultivation pattern whereas obtaining high quality and recognised wine products. Acknowledgements This report constitutes the graduation project of the Master of Science in Geomatics from the Technical University of Delft. The study has been carried out with the help of the Technical University of Delft and the Geological Institute of Catalonia. I would like to thank therefore both organizations for giving me the opportunity to work in this project whereas also for providing me with the tools and the knowledge to perform this study. Many people have been involved in my project and in these lines I would like to express my appreciation to them as well as to thank them for their support. Special thanks and the greatest appreciation go to my primary supervisor, Dr. Sisi Zlatanova, who always appeared and helped me at the right moment and without her help, this thesis would not be finished. Furthermore, I would like to thank Dr. Dominique Ngan-Tillard and Dr. Bob Hoogendoorn, being the people who introduced me and helped me at the first steps of this project whereas also my Professor Nick van de Giesen, my external supervisor Dr. Aline Concha Dimas and my second supervisor Dr. Leon van Paassen for their assistance during the project implementation. Professor Massimo Menenti, Dr. Emmanuel Tsiros, Mr. Pavlos Argyropoulos and Miss Fanny Argyropoulos deserve many thanks and my appreciation since their experience and familiarity with the wine terroir and data analysis as well as their practical experience with vine cultivations and the wine products offered me great assistance during this thesis’ implementation. My family and friends have always been with me during my studies diminishing the distance to my home country. I would like to thank my family, Costas, Lilian and Maria who made it possible for me to follow and complete the Geomatics MSc, providing me with continuous emotional and material support as well as my friends Dimitris, Alexandros, Menelaos, Efi, Zoi and many others who were always close to me. Last but not least I would like to thank much my boyfriend, Panos, for his support and his ability to always make me feel calm. vii viii Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Background . 1 1.2 Terroir and viticultural zoning research . 2 1.3 The research motivation and objectives . 9 1.4 Software and data . 10 1.5 Limitations . 11 2 The DOQ Priorat wine region 13 2.1 The DOQ Priorat wine region . 13 2.2 DOQ Priorat municipalities and demographics . 15 2.3 DOQ Priorat landuse . 16 2.3.1 DOQ Priorat vineyards . 17 3 The wine BTU in DOQ Priorat 21 3.1 Topographic features . 21 3.2 Soil features . 22 3.3 Climatic features . 26 4 The multivariate analysis of the DOQ Priorat BTU factors 33 4.1 Analysis’ variables and methods . 33 4.2 Topographic classification and ranking . 35 4.3 Soil classification and ranking . 36 4.4 Climatic classification and vine varieties’ matching . 37 5 The DOQ Priorat terroirs and current vineyards 39 5.1 The BTU attributes’ contribution to the wine terroir . 39 5.2 Topographic and soil suitability assessment . 41 5.3 The DOQ Priorat terroir units . 44 5.4 Terroirs and current vineyards . 45 6 Conclusions and Discussion 47 A The terroir concept 55 B Available data before processing 57 C Correlations between soil properties, topography and geology 59 D Texture 61 E Maps 63 E.1 DOQ Priorat municipalities .