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2.6Convergent Legacies
The historical processes outlined above gave rise to a group of common legacies that controlled the history of terraced wine-growing areas in the course of the twentieth century. Those belong to the picture of general reduction in Europe of the use of terracing, indicated by slight chorological variations and varying intensity according to the region.
Such contraction occurred in connection with a general productivity crisis in farming on the slopes, coinciding both with mechanisation of agriculture on level ground and with emigration towards urban or industrial centres, or, for the Mediterranean coasts, to tourist centres. The contraction was brought about in real terms by the replacement of terracing with other forms of management through the possibilities offered by mechanisation, by expansion of residential areas and, above all, by abandonment of the land. This last phenomenon assumed almost everywhere astounding dimensions, with reductions that in Italy often exceeded 75% of land previously under cultivation. In Calabria’s Costa Viola, the extent of cultivated terracing has dropped from 612 ha in 1929 to 130 ha today (Nicolosi and Cambareri 2007); in the Cinque Terre, an area among the most hit by abandonment, the passage has been from a maximum of 1200 ha of cultivated land in the course of the twentieth century to around 100 ha today (Besio 2002). This trend of contraction also continues in our times, if more slowly, in spite of various operations of support for marketing and of heritage conservation, among them the inclusion of various areas in UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites. In Lavaux, the loss between 1993 and 2015 was 40 ha (OCVP 2015). Between 2006 and 2015, the wine-growing area of the Vallese, terraced and not (but the former was probably worst hit), decreased by an annual rate of between 4 and 8% (Canton du Valais 2016).
As has been said, elsewhere the dominant phenomenon has by contrast been the movement towards other ways of managing the slopes. In Alto Douro, terracing has been replaced by what is known as patamares and by vertical planting. The latter is also responsible for the major transformation of the wine-growing landscape in the Rhine and Moselle valleys.
To the reasons for the decline in terracing cited above must be added that of the significant diseases that attacked the vine in Europe from the mid-nineteenth century. Oidium, peronospora and above all phylloxera, while not permanently changing the productive assets on a national scale (Bonardi 2014; Jacquet and Bourgeon 2010), sometimes began or hastened the process of abandonment at a local or regional level.
As appears in the course of specific research studies (APARE 1983; Bonardi and Varotto 2016), one of the causes of these areas’ economic weakness is the fragmentation of ownership. Among the most macroscopic examples can be cited the distribution values of ownership in Val d’Aosta, where 80% of the total cultivated land (equivalent to 98% of the businesses) is held in properties of less than one hectare, and those of Ribeira Sacra, with 93% of the cultivated land subdivided
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between farms of less than two hectares (www.cervim.org). The latter situation is very similar to that of Calabria’s Costa Viola, where the average size of the holdings is less than two and a half hectares (Di Fazio et al. 2005).
This phenomenon has its origins, as has been seen, in the processes of the actual construction of these holdings and, specifically, from those aspects of management of the ownership, common to so many areas, that from the beginning of the slopes’ agricultural exploitation has favoured strong parcellisation of the land ownership. Overcoming the problematic legacy through systems of consolidation represents a major challenge for these areas today.
Notwithstanding these findings, the reduction of terraced wine-growing areas, as with those olive-growing, has in general been less drastic in comparison to other crops, including cereal and fruit growing, once very widespread.
It is clear that the ubiquitous establishment of a market economy has in the first-place penalised subsistence farming and, more generally, mixed cropping systems. By contrast, highly specialised productive systems, as exactly is terraced viticulture, open to the international markets, found themselves in the twentieth century in a relatively advantageous position. The centuries of inclusion in commercial circuits, guaranteed by their position along favourable communication routes or alongside market outlets, placed these areas very early on in a competitive system on a continental, and in some cases world, scale. In such a context were developed both forms of protection and improvement of the quality of production and pronounced specialisation. Among the last are the sweet or aromatic wines that mark the areas of Alto Douro (Porto), Banyuls (Vin doux naturel), Pantelleria (Moscato di Pantelleria and Passito di Pantelleria) and the Cinque Terre (Sciacchetrà).
Specialisation and quality perfecting in the course of the twentieth century have built an advantage that benefits the best wine estates of these economies, even if built on terracing, compared to others. From this perspective, it does not seem a matter of chance that the area of the largest single terraced viticulture in Europe corresponds to the world’s first viticulture designation, known as the “Pombaline Demarcations”, instituted from 1756 to control the quality of the wines of Alto Douro8 (Bianchi de Aguiar 2010). The first territorial delimitation of a sweet wine, on the other hand, dates back to 1909, that of the terraced area of Banyuls (Ferrer 1930).
From the same perspective of protection of the quality, and brand, of wine production is probably to be understood the system of vintage announcements applied for centuries in Valtellina following a rare model, for capillarity and historical persistency, in Italian viticulture. The explanatory layout of the process that leads from the geographical–environmental determinant to the survival of today’s terraced viticulture is summarised in Fig. 2.4.
8The systems of demarcation instituted in the first half of the eighteenth century in Chianti and Tokaj were of different origins.
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Fig. 2.4 Geographic variables and historical–economic development of terraced viticulture
2.7Conclusions
This work has highlighted the historical and geographical reasons, convergent and interconnected, that governed the localisation and evolution of the principal terraced wine-growing areas. These are part of the wider picture of the relationships between the sites of European viticulture with the centres of wine consumption. The problems linked to the transport of the wine over long distances, connected with those of its preservation, were addressed historically by a topographical approach with the solution of placing the vineyards along waterways, from time to time represented by rivers, lakes, the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. By guaranteeing the best means of transport for a product peculiarly liable to deterioration, such routes determined the economic fortune, often long-lasting, of the wine-growing regions developed along them. For Alpine localisation, an analogous solution was to some extent guaranteed by the existence of climatically favourable areas and the position alongside market outlets to Central Europe.
Much of the extent of European terraced vineyards can be explained by one or the other condition, which gave rise to the early opening up of the economies of these regions.
In fact, as Unwin (2005: 144) has already pointed out for the mediaeval period, “the idea of an independent Mediterranean peasantry, producing its own subsistence needs on its own land, is largely a myth”. This concept is certainly applicable to the large terraced areas, even if in a number of cases only from the modern age, and weakens the traditional vision of terracing as a holding and representation of
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self-sufficiency. In all probability, the economic dimension of these regions, strongly specialised from an early date, and the search for qualitative solutions, later brought about the positive major resistance in the face of the crises that struck European terraced viticulture in the course of the last century.
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Chapter 3
Italian Terraced Landscapes:
The Shapes and the Trends
Mauro Varotto, Francesco Ferrarese
and Salvatore Eugenio Pappalardo
Abstract Since the 1980s, Italian terraced landscapes have become the object of scientific attention, with a significant increase in systematic studies only in the last twenty years. However, the state of knowledge is still fragmentary. The studies were initially concentrated in limited areas considered particularly significant from an environmental or historical point of view. Even today, a detailed, national map of terraced landscapes is still lacking. Starting from this “state of the art” formed by extremely differentiated knowledge levels, the project “Mapping Terraced Landscapes in Italy” (MAPTER) began, thanks to the collaboration of several research centers at the third Meeting of the International Terraced Landscapes Alliance (ITLA) (October 6–15, 2016). MAPTER collected and attempted to harmonize, for the first time, the available data on both local and regional scales, integrating them with further surveys for uncovered areas, to produce an initial estimate of national terraced systems. This contribution delineates, first, the project’s outcomes, presenting the initial data concerning the extent and geographical distribution of Italian terraced systems. The second part of the contribution includes observations on the new processes of returning to abandoned terraced lands. These observations have emerged from a survey (the Livingstones Project) promoted by the Italian Alpine Club, and they are used here to identify practices of a virtuous “third way” for managing rural mountain areas, far from marginality, abandonment, and productive intensification.
M. Varotto (&) F. Ferrarese S. E. Pappalardo
Department of Historical and Geographic Sciences and the Ancient World, University of Padova, Padua, Italy
e-mail: mauro.varotto@unipd.it
F. Ferrarese
e-mail: francesco.ferrarese@unipd.it
S. E. Pappalardo
e-mail: salvatore.pappalardo@unipd.it
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