Climate and Wine Quality: European lessons on climatic influences during good and poor vintages

Consensus ranking of vintages are used to investigate climate patterns that influence good and poor quality vintages in Bordeaux, France and in Tuscany, Italy for Bordeaux reds and Tuscany Chianti wines. The good and poor ranked vintages have quite contrasting climate anomalies and differentiated weather patterns throughout the growing season. For both cases of reds in Bordeaux and Tuscany the growing season temperatures and heat units were significantly higher for the good, compared with the poor ranked vintages. For Tuscany specific weather types (WT) are associated with each group. The European lessons have applicability to the New Zealand situation where widely diverse climatic patterns occur across the different wine growing districts.