- •Series Editor’s Preface
- •Contents
- •Contributors
- •1 Introduction
- •References
- •2.1 Methodological Introduction
- •2.2 Geographical Background
- •2.3 The Compelling History of Viticulture Terracing
- •2.4 How Water Made Wine
- •2.5 An Apparent Exception: The Wines of the Alps
- •2.6 Convergent Legacies
- •2.7 Conclusions
- •References
- •3.1 The State of the Art: A Growing Interest in the Last 20 Years
- •3.2 An Initial Survey on Extent, Distribution, and Land Use: The MAPTER Project
- •3.3.2 Quality Turn: Local, Artisanal, Different
- •3.3.4 Sociability to Tame Verticality
- •3.3.5 Landscape as a Theater: Aesthetic and Educational Values
- •References
- •4 Slovenian Terraced Landscapes
- •4.1 Introduction
- •4.2 Terraced Landscape Research in Slovenia
- •4.3 State of Terraced Landscapes in Slovenia
- •4.4 Integration of Terraced Landscapes into Spatial Planning and Cultural Heritage
- •4.5 Conclusion
- •Bibliography
- •Sources
- •5.1 Introduction
- •5.3 The Model of the High Valleys of the Southern Massif Central, the Southern Alps, Castagniccia and the Pyrenees Orientals: Small Terraced Areas Associated with Immense Spaces of Extensive Agriculture
- •5.6 What is the Reality of Terraced Agriculture in France in 2017?
- •References
- •6.1 Introduction
- •6.2 Looking Back, Looking Forward
- •6.2.4 New Technologies
- •6.2.5 Policy Needs
- •6.3 Conclusions
- •References
- •7.1 Introduction
- •7.2 Study Area
- •7.3 Methods
- •7.4 Characterization of the Terraces of La Gomera
- •7.4.1 Environmental Factors (Altitude, Slope, Lithology and Landforms)
- •7.4.2 Human Factors (Land Occupation and Protected Nature Areas)
- •7.5 Conclusions
- •References
- •8.1 Geographical Survey About Terraced Landscapes in Peru
- •8.2 Methodology
- •8.3 Threats to Terraced Landscapes in Peru
- •8.4 The Terrace Landscape Debate
- •8.5 Conclusions
- •References
- •9.1 Introduction
- •9.2 Australia
- •9.3 Survival Creativity and Dry Stones
- •9.4 Early 1800s Settlement
- •9.4.2 Gold Mines Walhalla West Gippsland Victoria
- •9.4.3 Goonawarra Vineyard Terraces Sunbury Victoria
- •9.6 Garden Walls Contemporary Terraces
- •9.7 Preservation and Regulations
- •9.8 Art, Craft, Survival and Creativity
- •Appendix 9.1
- •References
- •10 Agricultural Terraces in Mexico
- •10.1 Introduction
- •10.2 Traditional Agricultural Systems
- •10.3 The Agricultural Terraces
- •10.4 Terrace Distribution
- •10.4.1 Terraces in Tlaxcala
- •10.5 Terraces in the Basin of Mexico
- •10.6 Terraces in the Toluca Valley
- •10.7 Terraces in Oaxaca
- •10.8 Terraces in the Mayan Area
- •10.9 Conclusions
- •References
- •11.1 Introduction
- •11.2 Materials and Methods
- •11.2.1 Traditional Cartographic and Photo Analysis
- •11.2.2 Orthophoto
- •11.2.3 WMS and Geobrowser
- •11.2.4 LiDAR Survey
- •11.2.5 UAV Survey
- •11.3 Result and Discussion
- •11.4 Conclusion
- •References
- •12.1 Introduction
- •12.2 Case Study
- •12.2.1 Liguria: A Natural Laboratory for the Analysis of a Terraced Landscape
- •12.2.2 Land Abandonment and Landslides Occurrences
- •12.3 Terraced Landscape Management
- •12.3.1 Monitoring
- •12.3.2 Landscape Agronomic Approach
- •12.3.3 Maintenance
- •12.4 Final Remarks
- •References
- •13 Health, Seeds, Diversity and Terraces
- •13.1 Nutrition and Diseases
- •13.2 Climate Change and Health
- •13.3 Can We Have Both Cheap and Healthy Food?
- •13.4 Where the Seed Comes from?
- •13.5 The Case of Yemen
- •13.7 Conclusions
- •References
- •14.1 Introduction
- •14.2 Components and Features of the Satoyama and the Hani Terrace Landscape
- •14.4 Ecosystem Services of the Satoyama and the Hani Terrace Landscape
- •14.5 Challenges in the Satoyama and the Hani Terrace Landscape
- •References
- •15 Terraced Lands: From Put in Place to Put in Memory
- •15.2 Terraces, Landscapes, Societies
- •15.3 Country Planning: Lifestyles
- •15.4 What Is Important? The System
- •References
- •16.1 Introduction
- •16.2 Case Study: The Traditional Cultural Landscape of Olive Groves in Trevi (Italy)
- •16.2.1 Historical Overview of the Study Area
- •16.2.3 Structural and Technical Data of Olive Groves in the Municipality of Trevi
- •16.3 Materials and Methods
- •16.3.2 Participatory Planning Process
- •16.4 Results and Discussion
- •16.5 Conclusions
- •References
- •17.1 Towards a Circular Paradigm for the Regeneration of Terraced Landscapes
- •17.1.1 Circular Economy and Circularization of Processes
- •17.1.2 The Landscape Systemic Approach
- •17.1.3 The Complex Social Value of Cultural Terraced Landscape as Common Good
- •17.2 Evaluation Tools
- •17.2.1 Multidimensional Impacts of Land Abandonment in Terraced Landscapes
- •17.2.3 Economic Valuation Methods of ES
- •17.3 Some Economic Instruments
- •17.3.1 Applicability and Impact of Subsidy Policies in Terraced Landscapes
- •17.3.3 Payments for Ecosystem Services Promoting Sustainable Farming Practices
- •17.3.4 Pay for Action and Pay for Result Mechanisms
- •17.4 Conclusions and Discussion
- •References
- •18.1 Introduction
- •18.2 Tourism and Landscape: A Brief Theoretical Staging
- •18.3 Tourism Development in Terraced Landscapes: Attractions and Expectations
- •18.3.1 General Trends and Main Issues
- •18.3.2 The Demand Side
- •18.3.3 The Supply Side
- •18.3.4 Our Approach
- •18.4 Tourism and Local Agricultural System
- •18.6 Concluding Remarks
- •References
- •19 Innovative Practices and Strategic Planning on Terraced Landscapes with a View to Building New Alpine Communities
- •19.1 Focusing on Practices
- •19.2 Terraces: A Resource for Building Community Awareness in the Alps
- •19.3 The Alto Canavese Case Study (Piedmont, Italy)
- •19.3.1 A Territory that Looks to a Future Based on Terraced Landscapes
- •19.3.2 The Community’s First Steps: The Practices that Enhance Terraces
- •19.3.3 The Role of Two Projects
- •19.3.3.1 The Strategic Plan
- •References
- •20 Planning, Policies and Governance for Terraced Landscape: A General View
- •20.1 Three Landscapes
- •20.2 Crisis and Opportunity
- •20.4 Planning, Policy and Governance Guidelines
- •Annex
- •Foreword
- •References
- •21.1 About Policies: Why Current Ones Do not Work?
- •21.2 What Landscape Observatories Are?
- •References
- •Index
14 L. Bonardi
Lavaux, of Wachau, of the Moselle and the Rhine, and of the Rhone’s Haute Côte, are part of this type of framework.
Clearly, the peri-urban localisation strategy could only represent a partial solution to the overall problem of wine, leaving unanswered the problem, among others, of the demand from non-producing areas, in particular from central and northern Europe.
The location and very existence of part of European terraced viticulture represents a response to this last problem.
2.4How Water Made Wine
The fluvial, lacustrian and maritime geographical frameworks (Table 2.1), which embrace about 70% of the areas being considered, define as a whole a macro-category centred upon a strong relationship between terraced viticulture and a water environment.
In certain continental contexts, such as those of the Wachau, the Moselle, the Rhine and other areas of German terraced viticulture, the location along the sides of great river valleys can be partly explained by the influence of the micro-climate created by the great rivers. Nevertheless, it is above all their role as important waterways that should be looked at to gain a comprehensive understanding of this relationship.
As can be easily realised, the waterways that influenced terracing are almost always navigable, even if occasionally with difficulty and the need for operations to improve the river’s course.4
In a number of cases, water transport was, and at times still is, the only way of reaching the vineyards. Circumstances of this kind are found on the Calabrian Costa Viola, at Ischia, in the Cinque Terre, in Ribeira Sacra and in Alto Douro.
Above all, however, it was the possibility of transporting wine for long distances that determined the central position of navigable routes in the development of viticulture. Rivers, canals and lakes, apart from serving the neighbouring urban markets, were often the first artery of a more extensive network that used the sea as the principal means of international trade. The position of the great wine-growing regions of Europe, terraced and not, above all in France, Spain, Portugal and Germany, is evidence of the undoubted role played here by waterways.
Even more so, the importance of transport by water explains the directly coastal and micro-insular and insular position of many extensive terraced viticulture systems on the Mediterranean or Atlantic: Cinque Terre, the Amalfi coast, the
4Linked to the necessity for expanding viticulture are the works carried out at the end of the eighteenth century to alter the Portuguese course of the Douro, in the stretch through the Valeira gorges. These works enabled major viticulture exploitation of the slopes in the upper reaches of the valley (d’Abreu 2007). For the advantages given to viticulture around Vienne by the eighteenth-century engineering works on the course of the Loire, see Gadille (1978).
2 Terraced Vineyards in Europe: The Historical Persistence … |
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Calabrian Costa Viola, Pantelleria, the Azores, the Canaries, etc. This relationship, however, is not restricted to wine-growing, but is also part of other specialised growing, such as that of olives and citrus fruits (Ferrigni 2011).
Nor should it be forgotten that the sea carried considerable quantities of wine products destined for the direct provision of the military and commercial navies. It is significant that an amply terraced viticulture such as that around Etna had reached its greatest expansion (eight thousand hectares of cultivated ground in the whole of the province of Catania) between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, thanks to trade with the French, Austro-Hungarian and British navies (www.cervim.org).
Provisioning the British navy, for whom were intended large quantities of wine coming from the terraced regions, seems a key factor in the development of viticulture in the Mediterranean and Atlantic areas. For different terraced regions, the demand coming from Britain represented the principle driving force for bringing land under cultivation, but, as the markets closed, it also represented productive decline and abandonment. The history of terracing and the wines of Douro and Banyuls-Collioure fit amply into this scheme of things, together with those of other regions producing fortified wines such as Madeira, sherry and Marsala. The history of the area of Cap de le Nào, in the province of Alicante, shows the importance of the British market. As shown by Courtot (1990), the great development of terracing in this region, linked to the production of raisins to satisfy the demands of the British market, fell into crisis as soon as British importers found markets to supply them in Greece and Turkey that were more conveniently and easily reached after the development of steam navigation.
Analogous dynamics, part of a changeable geopolitical and commercial picture, are behind the rapid development and subsequent crises of the terraced viticulture of Tenerife, in the Canaries, between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Unwin 2005).
The history of European viticulture is one that constantly interweaves the destinies of different regions of production. Tensions and conflicts between states, the politics of customs duties and tax systems interventions have determined the continuous market repositioning of those wine-producing regions strongly directed towards trade, including, almost always, the terraced ones.
The localised constraints outlined here were broken in the nineteenth century by the improvement of the network of road communications and, even more, by the establishment in the second half of the century of communication routes opened up through the railways (Fig. 2.2).
2.5An Apparent Exception: The Wines of the Alps
The second key to localisation of terraced wine-growing is to be sought in the position of the Alps, straddling Europe between its heart and the Mediterranean, and in the specific geological, geomorphological and climatic characteristics of some of its areas. The existence of important terraced complexes in the Alps can be
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Fig. 2.2 Terraces market oriented in Alto Duero. Photo L. Bonardi
explained by the proximity of outlet markets that, in a geographical sense, were almost as significant as those along the great river valleys. To understand how the Alps could play a role of this type, we must above all examine the distribution of the terraced vineyards in the region. With the sole exception of Canavese, in Piedmont, which has particular morphological characteristics, the vineyards are found along the south-facing slopes of the great internal valleys that run from east to west5: Val d’Aosta, Valtellina, Val di Cembra, Vallese. The same arrangement is also found today in contexts of modest production, such as the vineyards of Val di Susa and Val Venosta. In addition, the limited but mainly south-facing stretches formed at the confluence of valleys of a north–south orientation make up the most intensively terraced areas in those valleys. An example of this type is the viticulture terracing, today mostly abandoned, of Val Chiavenna (Aldighieri et al. 2006). Analogous situations are also met outside the Alps, as at the confluence of the lateral valleys of the Rhone, giving rise to a number of terraced areas around Condrieu (Gadille 1978).
The absence of terracing on the facing side, looking north, causes in many cases conspicuous landscape asymmetry but also, in the past, some economic integration
5Obviously, this does not exclude the development of viticulture in valleys of contrary orientation, as in the important case of the Adige valley.
2 Terraced Vineyards in Europe: The Historical Persistence … |
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between the slopes. One of the best known examples is the cultivation of a coppice of chestnuts on the Valtellina Orobie Alpine slope, which were used to provide stakes for supporting the vines grown in the Rhaetic Alpine terraced vineyards (Lorusso forthcoming).
The inland position and longitudinal orientation of these valleys determine a common climatic picture for many stretches that have terraced viticulture. These zones receive low rainfall, significantly less than that received by the neighbouring Alpine sectors that have, however, a different exposure to the flow of the prevailing seasonal currents. The most representative cases of this influence are those of the eastern sector of terracing of Valtellina, Vallese, and, to a more limited extent, Val d’Aosta.6 The low rainfall and strong exposure to the sun guaranteed by the southern aspect represent the best possible conditions for viticulture, even if in situations not devoid of water stress. Therefore, it is not by chance that, with the sole exception of the slopes along the Brenta Canal, once given over to intensive tobacco cultivation, all the major Alpine terraced systems were exclusively dedicated to the production of wine.
These environmental conditions gave rise to systems of generous proportions, thanks to the relative proximity of important market outlets, represented both by neighbouring urban centres, as in the case of Vallese, and by regions beyond the Alps. The terraced viticulture of Valtellina (Scaramellini 2014), of Ossola (Moschini 2017) limited today to few productive fragments and of Val d’Aosta (Moreno 2012: 171–172) was historically dependent on their position alongside Switzerland and so of export to the Swiss cantons. This factor was particularly, and more importantly, seen in Valtellina, whose production, thanks to its centuries-long affiliation with the Grigioni, penetrated deep into the German, Alpine and continental world (Scaramellini 2014).
Not very different, along the side of the western Alps, the once flourishing viticulture of Val di Susa is explained by the protectionist policy imposed in late mediaeval times by the local controlling class, “against the wines of Lombardy and the Po to favour the sale of wine produced in the area both locally but above all in the transalpine regions (in the direction of Briançon and its area), reaching at the beginning of the modern age a spread of viticulture (with terracing as well as intensive planting in the valley bottoms) that had a certain anomaly in view of the environmental context”7 (Varanini 2003: 657).
Alongside the morpho-climatic and geographical location aspects, it is probable that the development of terraced vines on the Alpine watershed had been at some point also supported by climatic conditions. In this sense, a relatively significant
6The most significant minimal rainfall of this valley, around 500 mm annually, is measured in the area of Aosta, therefore further to the west compared to the location of what is today the most important productive terraced system of the region.
7“contro i vini lombardi e ‘padani’ per favorire lo smercio in sede locale, ma soprattutto verso le regioni transalpine (in direzione di Briançon e della sua regione) del vino prodotto in zona, arrivando agli inizi dell’età moderna ad una diffusione della viticoltura (con terrazzamenti, oltre che con intensivi impianti in fondovalle) certo anomala rispetto al contesto ambientale”.
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Fig. 2.3 Transport of wine barrels over Bernina Pass at the turn of twentieth century
role may have been played by the worsening of climatic conditions that, above all in the second half of the sixteenth century, led to a deterioration, both qualitative and quantitative, in wine production in central Europe (Petit et al. 2012; Vinea Wachau 2014). This could have triggered a major recourse to wines coming from more “sheltered” southern Alpine lands and, therefore, an incentive to bring new ground under cultivation in these regions.
Together with these particular elements should not be forgotten the integration of the terraced lands, both Alpine and those beside fluvial and maritime transport routes, in the more general dynamics that have involved European viticulture in the course of the modern and present age. The principal factors underlying the expansive processes are those generally connected to demographic growth, and so of consumption, and those of a progressive growth, from mediaeval times, of the symbolic value of wine as an indication of social status (Pini 2003), particularly in central and northern Europe (Unwin 2005).
To the decrease in the acreage of terraced viticulture from the late nineteenth century, various factors, peculiar to the world of terraced agriculture in general, contributed (Fig. 2.3).