Search

In recent decades the wine landscape of La Rioja has experienced a radical change, connected with wine market dynamics and internal changes in the wine sector (increase in the areas of vineyards managed by big wine companies) as well as the provisions emanating from public policies, especially all those which arose from the Common Market Organization [CMO] in 1999 and 2008, within the Common Agricultural Policy (Regulations 1493/1999 and 479/2008). Recent changes in the vineyard landscape in La Rioja as a consequence of restructuring programmes derived from wine sector CMOs in 1999 and 2008, are analysed in this paper. The results show grubbing-up of vines, the expansion of new plots on irrigated lands, and the increasing presence of vines grown on trellises; changes that bring a natural decline in landscape aesthetics. Such changes, however, are insufficiently reflected in the statistics, as they do not take into consideration the heterogeneous nature of the territory. Cartography focusing on soil uses and land cover, able to incorporate landscape aesthetics in the structure of fragments as well as their size and shape, is required. The availability of precise, objective studies on the wine landscape has recently emerged as an interesting topic, as wine tourism has become a new socioeconomic niche for wine territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]