GEOGRAFIE DEL VINO: COSTRUZIONE STORICA E PATRIMONIALIZZAZIONE DEI PAESAGGI VITICOLI

Abstract

This research project is supposed to face up viticulture in a complex, epistemological framework. As Dickenson and Salt affirm the geography of the wine «may be studied from a variety of perspectives and encompasses the influence of the physical environment, historical diffusion of the vine and viticulture, economic geographies of cultivation and marketing, political influences on trade and production, and cultural perceptions of landscapes, product and people». After all, already in the Latin etymology of viticulture exists a deep content hiatus that imposes to consider two fair enough different concepts; indeed, culture may refer to cultivation and care. Therefore, it is crucial to understand how viticulture must be considered and to show the way its dichotomic nature may suggest distant methodologies of investigation. After having underlined the epistemological framework of viticulture in relationship to geography and given the interpretative tools of the research, I analyzed the construction and the evolution of some viticultural landscapes (Montalcino, Barolo, Bolgheri and the Cote d’Or) whose choice depends on the dynamics that regarded their production (characterized by a particular propensity to commercialization), the relationships and the differences among them and finally the essential relationship that wine creates with its territory of origin. The role of the tradition represents the fil rouge that links these experiences and it declines in a different perspective according to the realities I analyzed. However, for each of them, it has been fundamental the role developed by a forerunner; indeed, Ferruccio Biondi for Brunello di Montalcino, Juliette Colbert-Falletti for Barolo and Mario Incisa della Rocchetta for the Sassicaia have not only contributed to the creation of a wine but generally to the development of a whole territory that is identified today in the cultivation of the grapevine. Finally, in virtue of such a rooted and shared historical construction, these territories take part in the processes of patrimonialization that are characterizing some wine regions to a global scale. Following different criterions of classification, where however viticulture covers a preponderant aspect, Val d’Orcia, Langhes and the climats de Bourgogne are considered from the UNESCO a human world heritage to safeguard while Bolgheri has been inserted by Regione Tuscana in the catalog of the historical rural landscapes; in all these cases, independently from who promoted the patrimonialization, the aim is clear: to allow the future generations to enjoy the cultural and environmental wealth that distinguish them. The wine landscapes are reported to be the ones that underwent fast and important transformations. Moving from this, I underline the debate around the relationship between patrimonialization (considered as a specific process of conservation) and the general transformation of the landscape. From this perspective, the criterions of patrimonialization adopted for the viticultural landscapes seem not to…