- Title
- Bulk Wine from Big Water in a Dry Land
- Creator
- McIntyre, Julie
- Relation
- Environmental History Vol. 29, Issue 3, p. 552-567
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/730808
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2024
- Description
- To retain a “taste of place” or terroir, some French fine wine production prohibits engineered irrigation of wine grapes, relying instead upon precipitation. As grapevines are sensitive to overwatering, this measure aims to protect the delicate sensory qualities of luxury wine brands as a sort of comestible artform.1 The Bourgogne, a region that epitomizes French terroir-style wines—as well as other less venerated wine regions around the world—traditionally expect to receive sufficient rainfall in the Vitis vinifera growing season and so do not require irrigation. This is not true for the vineyards of Australia, the planet’s most arid continent. Its temperate latitudes for the most part receive sparser rainfall than Europe, and in some regions that rainfall comes at times that do not suit the grape growing season. Australia has few mountainous landforms and rivers and comparatively little arable soil for European-style agriculture. For these reasons, alongside cultural ones, Australia has a different wine history from that of Europe. As late as the turn of the twenty-first century, Australian wine production was, in the main, bulk or low-cost nonpremium wines from noble varieties of European Vitis vinifera grown in warm regions that relied on water from engineered irrigation, the anathema of purist terroir wines.
- Subject
- bulk wine; Vitis vinifera; Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area; Australia
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1516491
- Identifier
- uon:56984
- Identifier
- ISSN:1084-5453
- Language
- eng
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