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PIWI: When viticulture adapts to climate change

[vc_row full_screen_section_height=”no”][vc_column][vc_column_text]Among the great challenges that viticulture is facing and will increasingly have to face is climate change. It is no coincidence that last May the Court of Master of Wines organised a meeting on climate change, theInternational Cool Climate Wine Symposium e  will do the same for 2018, a sign that this theme is crucial in outlining the profile of future winemaking.

Climate change does not only mean the possibility of growing vines where it was unthinkable until thirty years ago – the south of England to cite the most striking example – but also managing the progressive increase in alcohol content as well as dealing with an increasingly irregular climate trend, with droughts the order of the day. Added to this is the arrival of new pathogens such as Drosophila Suzuki (read the post) but also the note golden flavescence which in recent years has shown a worrying resurgence.

The solution to these problems could be less distant than we think, if not right before our eyes, in the vine itself, in particular in the so-called resistant vines. Resistant to drought, like those the Wine Research Team is working on, but also to diseases, especially fungal ones. It is precisely to this second group that the PIWI, Short for Pilzwiderstandfahig.

These are fungus-resistant vines, specifically the following varieties:

Bronner, Cabernet Carbon, Cabernet Cortis, Gamaret,
Helios, Muscaris, Johanniter, Prior, Regent e Solaris
Besides
Monarch Noir, Muscari Blanc, Prior Noir e Grey Souvignier,
which, just a few months ago, France approved
among the admitted ampelographic varieties (more).

Experiments on these vines started in Germany decades ago, followed by Austria and Switzerland, but Italy has not stood by and watched. Veneto, Trentino Alto Adige and Friuli Venezia Giulia are in fact leading important research projects, thanks to collaboration with centers such as the Edmund Mach Foundation - Istituto Agrario San Michele all'Adige, Innovitis (a private institute based in Bolzano), the University of Udine and the CRA-Vit of Conegliano Veneto (Treviso). And research is being conducted on one of the most important vines for the Veneto economy, Glera, as well as on Raboso del Piave and, in the Vicenza area, on Solaris.

Although the regulations are not yet up to date - despite being registered in the variety register, PIWIs are subject to the limitations set out in art. 8, paragraph 6, of Legislative Decree no. 61/2010, which prevents the use of the grapes harvested for the production of DOC and DOCG wines - something is moving: the first tasting of Piwi wines by Veneto Agricoltura actually dates back two years ago, when during Vinitaly 2015, an official tasting was organised to take stock of the situation.

Today at international level thePIWI Association, founded in 2000, has over 350 members from 17 different countries between Europe and North America and there is an ever-increasing interest from producers who are seeing the possibility of a net reduction, sometimes up to 80%, of antifungal treatments, in a direction that also speaks to consumers who are attentive to sustainability.

 

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3 thoughts on "PIWI: When viticulture adapts to climate change"

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