Chapter 2

Terraced Vineyards in Europe:

The Historical Persistence of Highly

Specialised Regions

Luca Bonardi

Abstract This contribution analyses the spread, origin and evolution of the most important European terraced viticulture complexes. Found in Mediterranean, Atlantic and continental areas, the terraces dedicated to viticulture owe their localisation to recurring geographical–environmental and historical movements in the different regions. Proximity to market outlets and to waterways were the key elements in their origins and distribution. The reasons behind the construction of the great viticulture terraced areas then guided the evolution of their twentiethcentury history. In terms of the elements involved, the most influential inherited factors appear to be strong land fragmentation and the early entry into favourable commercial circuits.

2.1Methodological Introduction

Through their historical origin and the reasons behind their growth, the terraces dedicated to viticulture form, within the more general framework of agrarian terracing, a landscape category characterised by specific models of development.

Few of these specific elements emerge from the studies on terraced landscapes carried out up until now, mostly directed at analysing, according to each case, the environmental, historical, technical and economic aspects from a regional or local perspective (e.g. Terranova 1989; Blanc 2001; Scaramellini and Varotto 2008; Queijeiro et al. 2010; Barbera et al. 2009; Formica 2010; Schultz 2010; Constans 2010). Even at this level, however, research dedicated specifically to viticulture is rare, both where viticulture has been the principal mover behind the building of the terraces (as is the case for much of Alpine and Central European terracing) (Petit et al. 2012; Scaramellini 2014; Lorusso forthcoming), and where it shares this role with other cultivation. The author has previously carried out a number of deeper

L. Bonardi (&)

Department of Philosophy “Piero Martinetti”, University of Milan, Milan, Italy e-mail: luca.bonardi@unimi.it

M. Varotto et al. (eds.), World Terraced Landscapes: History, Environment, Quality of Life, Environmental History 9, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96815-5_2

studies, from a landscape angle, into the comparative relationship between terracing and viticulture (Bonardi 2010, 2014).

This chapter, in contrast, uses a historical and environmental perspective to bring together the geographical–territorial and historical factors that have influenced the localisation and evolution of terraced viticulture. In the final section, we seek to understand how such factors are basic to the original pathways that have differentiated the recent history of terraced viticulture from that of other agricultural production.

As far as localisation aspects are concerned, the study is based upon field research carried out in the course of the last fifteen years. This research was preceded by a selective study of the available photo-cartographic material.

Alongside the analysis of the historical literature and scientifically based material on the different regions, analysis of the European wine trade has proved to be fundamental in verifying the hypothesis of “convergent evolution” of viticulture areas strongly directed towards commerce.

Only those terraces built with stone (predominantly dry-stone, unmortared) have been considered here, while those of earth embankments have not been included.

The study also considers the vast single systems, stretching in a cohesive form over tens, hundreds or thousands of hectares, in which viticulture plays the central role to this day. By way of contrast, the study does not analyse those irregular scattered vineyards of limited size, existing just about everywhere, as much in areas dominated by non-terraced viticulture (e.g. the vineyards of Alsace or the Alto Adige), as in those which are terraced but oriented predominantly towards other production, such as the western Ligurian terraces dedicated above all to olive growing.

Likewise, the study only touches lightly on those contexts in which the terracing, while of a relevant complex, appears scattered on the hillsides like “leopard spots” (e.g. Chianti, Valpolicella, Ischia, Etna, Majorca, Canton Ticino), and those where the only evidence today is of abandoned viticulture, as in various Mediterranean islands (Aeolian Islands, Cyclades), and in some Italian Alpine valleys such as Val d’Ossola (Moschini 2017) and Val di Susa (Bartaletti 2006).

2.2Geographical Background

Terracing is found, although with varying degrees of intensity, across all continents, intended to support very different crops, both foodstuffs and others. In Asia, Africa and South America, the building of terraces is to a great extent linked to seed crops, in particular to cereal production. Intensive terracing at high altitudes is found in the Bolivian and Peruvian Andes, in East Africa (particularly in Ethiopia), in various regions of the Middle East and the Arabian peninsula, in the north of the Indian subcontinent and northern Indochina, in southern China, in Indonesia and in the Philippines.

In common with these contexts, important regional density of terracing is found in Europe south of latitude 50°N. Here the cultivation of vines, together with that of the olive in Mediterranean areas, has led to the existence of whole areas given over to closely built terracing. The most important examples are found in the Iberian peninsula, in the outlying Atlantic islands of the Azores, Madeira and, above all, the Canaries, in France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Italy. Smaller complexes are found in Slovenia, Croatia, Romania, Greece and Malta. Outside the European area, occasional or less important examples are found in Cyprus, Lebanon, Israel and Georgia. Viticulture terracing is also found in Australia, New Zealand and Brazil, linked to European emigration.

In the course of the twentieth century, all European regions experienced, with differing levels of intensity, contraction of the areas given over to terraced viticulture. Owing to this process, in a number of areas where terracing actually represented the main form of land-use under vines, productive terracing has today been marginalised (e.g. along the Luxembourg stretch of the Moselle). The principal areas of European terraced viticulture are brought together in Table 2.1. For the interpretative purposes that follow, account has also been taken in each of those areas of the geographical–environmental context in which they are found. Their localisation is given in Fig. 2.1.

As appears from Table 2.1, the principal terraced viticulture areas are found in four environments: fluvial, lacustrian and maritime, reduced to one from an his- torical–economic perspective, and Alpine.

What are the historical reasons that link these specific contexts to the practice of viticulture? And in particular, what compels these contexts towards terraced viticulture?

As we shall see, such relationships, apart from causing the characteristic typologies of the landscape, combine to explain the historical events of much of European viticulture practised by means of terracing.

2.3The Compelling History of Viticulture Terracing

The environmental preconditions that dictate the building of terracing in the interests of the slopes’ sustainable agricultural productivity, above all in the face of erosion, has been amply discussed from both the historical perspective (Frapa 1984, 1997; Provansal 1990) and the hydrological (Terranova et al. 2006; Consell de Mallorca 2007; Agnoletti et al. 2012; Tarolli et al. 2014; Cevasco et al. 2014; Camera et al. 2015). The passage from a potential necessity on every agriculturally exploited slope to the concrete existence of terracing is, however, the result of specific historical possibilities.

To understand the processes that have led to the construction in Europe of highly specialised terraced sites, both those predominantly intended for the cultivation of vines and olives and those designed on the Brenta Canal for the cultivation of

Table 2.1 Principal terraced viticulture landscapes (cultivated surface > 50 ha)

aSurface area calculated by the author on ortho-cartographic basis (regional and national geoportals)

bBy fluvial is meant the presence of a river that is at least partly navigable

tobacco (Chemin and Varotto 2008), or on the Amalfi Coast for citrus fruits (Ferrigni 2011), we must first consider the enormous labour needed to build them.

Estimates of the time required to build terracing have been made by Quaini (1973) for Liguria, and by Blanchemanche (1990) and Beauchamp (1992) for the south of France.

Added to the initial labour of construction is the work imposed by the terracing’s morphology, by the maintenance of the stone structure, by the capture, distribution and draining of water, and by the replacement of soil carried away by surface erosion. The costs represented by such activities are markedly higher than those incurred on level ground or by other methods of slope cultivation. There is an

formed only by vines planted em pilheiros, on the wall of the terrace, leaving the inbetween land called geio, free for cultivating cereals” (Pereira and Morais Barros 2016: 135).3

In other situations, on the properties of the aristocracy and gentry, very often city-based and sometimes already engaged in the wine trade, monoculture, only fully established between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, was conducted by means of paid labour, above all during the stage of building the terraces. The existence of specific skilled trades specialising in their construction, or on specific elements of it (Blanchemanche 1990: 167), is documented in different parts of Europe, as in Provence and Majorca (Blanc 2001). Likewise, there is evidence of temporary migrations of a skilled workforce, such as, in the mid-nineteenth century, the Ligurian workers in Canton Ticino, specifically employed in the construction of viticulture terracing (Ceschi 1999).

The establishment of strongly specialised wine-growing areas came about to a great extent through a localised system that included the terraced areas. Alongside the role of the pedoclimatic characteristics, central to high-quality production but equally important for that of a lower quality (Gauvard 1996), two elements were very significant. On the one hand, the difficulties of communication and transport by land in pre-nineteenth-century Europe, and on the other the problems of preserving the wine, which deteriorates easily, not least in transport. Right up to the modern age, and sometimes even beyond, these are the most important governing factors in European viticulture geography. As was clearly shown by Dion (1959), this has often restricted viticulture to the peri-urban areas, when not directly urban (Bonardi and Cavallo 2014), so placed as to be close to important centres of consumption. One only need think of the great vineyards of the Paris region, today reduced to a few tens of hectares, which were dedicated largely to the capital’s consumption (Dion 1959). Or, in Italy, of the vast viticulture areas that, still in the nineteenth century, could be found in Alto Milanese, in Rome’s urban perimeter, and close to other great cities. The position of terraced vineyards such as those of

3On the other hand, such a description closely recalls that of the model of terraced vine cultivation observed by Montaigne in Tuscany two centuries earlier. Talking of the countryside of Lucca, he wrote, “On ne peut trop louer la beauté et l’utilité de la methode qu’ils ont de cultiver les montagnes jusqu’à la cime, en y faisant, en form d’escaliers, de grand degrés circulaires tour autour, et fortifiant le haut de ces degrés, tantôt avec des pierres, tantôt avec d’autres revêtemens, lorsque la terre n’est pas assez ferme par elle-même. Le terre-plain de cet escalier, selon qu’il se trouve ou plus large ou plus étroit, est rempli de grain. Et son extrémité vers le vallon, c’est-à-dire, la circonférence ou le tour, est entourée de vignes; enfin, partout où l’on ne peut trouver ni faire un terrein uni, comme vers la cime, tous est mis en vignes” (One cannot praise too much the beauty and utility of the method which they have of cultivating mountains up to the top, making thereof in the form of staircases great circular steps all about them and reinforcing the higher parts of these steps both with stones and with other revetments when the earth is not solid enough on its own. The level ground of this staircase, according as to whether it is wider or narrower, is full of grain and its extremity towards the valley, that is to say the circumference of the circuit, is encircled by vines. Finally, wherever one cannot find or make a continuous land for cultivation, as towards the crest, everything is set to vines) (de Montaigne 1889: 444).