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World Viticulture

GIANFRANCO TEMPESTA

MONICA FIORILO

2. COLONIAL VITICULTURE (B1, B2, B3)

The discovery of America (B1 - B2) brought to the new continent not only the “conquistadores” from territories that claimed “We came to serve God, the King and also to become rich” , but a well-organised ecclesiastical body for the indoctrination of the indigenous of the New World. In their trunks they carry shoots to recreate their sacred rituals linked to wine in these new places (figure 4.3 The spread of the vine throughout the world).

With the planting of Vitis vinifera, the European vine started cohabitating with native varieties, generating natural hybrids such as Criolla, Cereza, País, Mission and many others (figure 4.4: Viticultural settlements in South America).

 

Reformers, such as Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and others, gave a new stigma to the concept of wine with their iconoclastic destruction of its sacredness; this dragged it into a purely mercantilist concept and made it no longer a symbol linked to religious rituality, They had the concept of a drink (grape juice) entering into commercial channels in the form of an alcoholic drink, made from native vines such as Catawba, Niagara, Isabella, and other more, more suitable for continental climates, figure 4.5: Viticultural settlements in Canada, United States and Mexico and table 4.4: Vineyard surface area in the Americas according to use).

 

 

Other countries, such as South Africa and New Zealand (B3) underwent the same migratory phenomenon of colonization by mainly Protestant people. In this case viticulture is much younger, and with an industrial and commercial imprinting.

This new viticulture often finds limiting factors such as lack of water, meteoric phenomena (spring frosts, hail, etc), despite being established in areas with soil and climatic characteristics similar to the Mediterranean (figure 4.6 Viticultural settlements in South Africa, New Zealand and Australia and relative table 4.5 Vineyard surface area in Africa, New Zealand and Australia).