The use of surveys among wine growers in vineyards of the middle-Loire Valley (France), in relation to terroir studies.

摘要

Studies of terroir have been increasingly developed during the last two decades, in different vineyards all around the world. The indigenous knowledge and the know-how of wine growers is an important part of the French terroir concept which must be taken into account in terroir studies. In the middle-Loire Valley (France) results of terroir studies were made readily accessible to all the wine growers through cartographic atlases, including maps of terroir units and their components as well as advisory maps. In this paper, the authors use different kinds of surveys among wine growers for the knowledge of terroir and show the interest of this approach. Surveys among farmers, performed at their home were developed within the framework of terroir studies carried out in the Anjou, Chinon and Sarthe vineyards in the middle-Loire Valley (France). A first category of surveys (59) led at the farm scale were used to characterise different vineyards at the socio-economic level. A second category of surveys (439) carried out at the plot scale have allowed to obtain a knowledge about agro-viticultural practices, and to study the viticultural and grape quality potentials of terroir units, in the regions studied. Finally, telephone surveys among 244 growers in the Anjou region were used to assess the level of perception of terroir studies and their impact through directive and semi-directive questionnaires, Socio-economic surveys at the wine farm scale made it possible to establish a general typology of studied vineyards, to identify their characteristics. Results allowed to distinguish between Chinon and Sarthe vineyards, in terms of operating structure, production potential, and typology of growers. Surveys showed large differences in terms of socio-economic aspects between the two studied vineyards. Agro-viticultural surveys, at the plot scale, provided significant differences for grape varieties, rootstocks and soil management practices, between the Chinon and Sarthe vineyards. Crossed with soils properties, these surveys allowed to identify the plant behaviour in terms of timing of the growth cycle, water supply and vine vigour and the potential for grape quality in different terroir units within an experimental area in Anjou vineyards. In these same vineyards, surveys about the perception and the acceptance of terroir studies by growers have shown that terroir studies and cartographic atlases, readily available to wine growers, were known by a large number of producers and used fairly frequently by some of them. Results of surveys indicated that about one quarter of growers were really influenced in their agro-viticultural practices by terroir studies. The rigorous and systematic use of adapted surveys bodes well for the rapid development of terroir studies in different vineyards. They make it possible to significantly alleviate classic studies without decreasing their relevance and they constitute an active contribution of wine growers to the characterization of terroir units. In addition, surveys can allow to assess the level of adaptation of agro-viticultural practices in use in the vineyards.