Exploring mountains potential for sparkling wine in a changing climate

Until recent times, mountainous areas were considered unsuitable for grape cultivation due to environmental limitations like late frosts, storms, and steep terrain. However, in the current context of climate change, mountains are being reconsidered as potential solutions for adapting viticulture. Forecasts suggest heightened thermal stress and drought during the grape growing season, impacting grape and wine quality negatively. Observed trends include earlier phenology, increased sugar and alcohol content in wine, loss of aroma precursors due to earlier ripening, and the expansion of suitable wine production areas to higher altitudes. This study aims to evaluate the suitability of hilly and mountainous areas in the Umbria region for establishing vineyards, primarily focusing on the production of sparkling wines. The suitability of each municipality is gauged using a composite index consisting of 4 macro-indicators. The first assesses socio-economic variables sourced from ISTAT data, including dependency ratio, activity rate, and education level of the local population. The second examines agricultural practices, considering factors such as PDO and organic crop percentage, and farm owner demographics from ISTAT's Agricultural Census. The third evaluates tourism-related data such as tourist arrivals and accommodation facilities. The fourth incorporates climatic data from the Ania-Geosafe portal. Afterwards, normalization and weighting of variables are done using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), with the consultation of 20 industry experts, including agronomists, viticulturists, local stakeholders. Weighted values are aggregated to determine the suitability index for each municipality. The study reveals rankings of the 92 municipalities in Umbria regarding their suitability for establishing an innovative vineyard. Preliminary findings indicate that mountainous regions show a greater inclination for implementing this innovative sparkling wine vineyard, primarily because of their favorable climatic conditions. These insights provide local governments with a useful instrument for assessing development prospects and economic growth opportunities linked with establishing such vineyards, potentially tackling challenges such as depopulation and land abandonment.