Analysis of grapevine production using some meteorological indices

The main aim of this study was to investigate on the possible impacts of atmospheric general circulation patterns of prevoius month/seasons (included in vineyard growing season) on quality characteristics of Brunello di Montalcino Italian wine during the time period 1971-2000. The study was developed comparing and/or correlating a wine quality indicator expressed in terms of number of stars from 1 (low quality) to 5 (high quality) with some atmospheric general circulation indices or directly with some meteorological fields over Europe and north Africa domain. Meteorological fields were obtained from the NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis Project, a joint project between the National Centre for Environmental Prediction and the National Centre for Atmospheric Research. Quality was also related with some bioblimatic indices determined using air temperature and rainfall historical series collected from a meteorological station close to the Brunello's geographical area. Wine quality resulted positively correlated with bioclimatic indices concerning air temperature during the growing season and negatively with cumulated rainfall in Summer. Significant correlations were also found between wine quality and NAO, AO and sea surface temperature (SST) of some previous periods of the year. These preliminary results together with further investigations could be used as the basis for the realisation of a monitoring and forecasting system of wine production in Italy, elaborating information on grape characteristics during the growing season. A special attention will be addressed to the possibility of using weather forecas to predict the quality aspects of production.