Viticultural landscape and soils in Cinque Terre national park: first contributions to the definition of the terroir

The valorization of terroir is mostly considered one of the greatest prospects of success for national agriculture within global market, very often the quality crops become also reference crops and driving imaging for a territory. The reconnaissance of the territory vocation needs the research of its peculiarities which determine the uniqueness of that production area. In particular, the Cinque Terre area, represents one of the most impressive example of coastal stepped landscape in the Mediterranean and is covered almost completely by vineyards of the famous denomination “DOC Cinque Terre (150 ha): Bianco Cinque Terre e lo Sciacchetrà. However, the boundaries of this appellation have been established based on administrative borders of the municipality while for the definition of the terroir particular consideration is given to natural elements as climate, soil and geomorphology. We performed a detailed terrain analysis on the DEM using GIS to improve the process of landscape and climate characterization while five profiles from distinct production vineyards were selected for soil characterization. We extracted some topographic characteristics as slope, aspect, altitude. These are successively overlaid with the map of the area registered in the vineyard of the DOC, mapped by GPS. We have analyzed the relationship between DOC vineyards and topographic characteristics: the maximum frequencies correspond to the slopes between 16° and 34°, to the elevation class from 100 to 300 m and to south facing and west facing slopes while the wine producing area lies a bedrock composed mainly of sandstone or claystone. The soils are fairly homogeneous with a sandy loam texture, pH from strongly to moderately acid, a adsorbing complex always unsaturated, all the exchangeable bases very low and medium to high concentrations of trace elements (Fe, Mn). Organic carbon and P are concentrated primary in the surface horizons indicating the addition of organic residues or fertilizers. Our dataset will contribute to the definition of terroir for “DOC Cinque Terre”.