The southern hemisphere is a disgrace

O

Oswaldo Costa

Oswaldo Costa
Had time to kill, so I tabulated the latitudes and altitudes of some (28) wine producing areas. The first table ranks them by latitude, the second by altitude.

The sample has a correlation of -0.5, i.e., the hotter the latitude, the higher the altitude. No surprise there, but 0.5 was less than I expected.

AltLong.jpg
Nine of the ten hottest latitudes in are in the new world. Again, no surprise, but why don't these countries have more vineyards in latitudes similar to those of, say, Burgundy and Bordeaux? The answer was perhaps the surprise of the exercise, at least for me: while the US certainly does, namely Oregon and Washington, the southern hemisphere basically doesn’t have zip.

To illustrate, if one were to say that the "ideal" latitude is in the vicinity of 45°, note how that covers huge stretches of the northern hemisphere but, in the southern, lies below Australia, below Africa, and only catches a small piece of South America:

Latitudes.bmp
 
So, why is it a disgrace when the fact is there's very little real estate in the Southern Hemisphere at 45°? Additionally, what the new world may lack in longitude, they make up in altitude, as many of the wine growing regions tend to lie at higher altitude, so the temperature is more conducive to grape growing.

If you compared average mean temperature of the wine growing regions, then you'd be on to something, though, personally, I think the fundamental difference is mindset, as in when to pick and how to make.
 
originally posted by Cliff:
Insult to injury?Hmmm, this in addition to the orientation of the continents? It just seems unfair.
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Indeed, the fact that northern hemisphere cartographers have arbitrarily placed us in the bottom half of the globe has generated all manner of inferiority complexes in our tender souls.

originally posted by Brad Kane:
So, why is it a disgrace when the fact is there's very little real estate in the Southern Hemisphere at 45°? Additionally, what the new world may lack in longitude, they make up in altitude, as many of the wine growing regions tend to lie at higher altitude, so the temperature is more conducive to grape growing.
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I meant that it's a disgrace that the creator, in all her lobby-beholden wisdom, has given almost all the new world 45° winemaking real estate to the good ole' US of A. As for making it up with altitude, altitude does not adequately compensate for latitude because of stuff like heat to light ratios and other voodoo agronomics. There's the stylistic thing too, I agree, but also a case of bad altitude

originally posted by Kay Bixler:
This is how you enjoy wine?
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Mais oui, the senses get their kicks from sensations, the mind from elocubrations. Nobody told me there was only room for one under the big tent.
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:

Indeed, the fact that northern hemisphere cartographers have arbitrarily placed us in the bottom half of the globe has generated all manner of inferiority complexes in our tender souls.
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The east-west bit turns out to be an even bigger deal than who's on top.
 
originally posted by Cliff:
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:

Indeed, the fact that northern hemisphere cartographers have arbitrarily placed us in the bottom half of the globe has generated all manner of inferiority complexes in our tender souls.
Click to expand...

The east-west bit turns out to be an even bigger deal than who's on top.
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Interesting, but flipping who's on top would solve that too, no?
 
Nope, not if you believe Diamond. It's the east-west vs. north-south orientation of the continents that matters.
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
why don't these countries have more vineyards in latitudes similar to those of, say, Burgundy and Bordeaux?
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Umm, the Gulf Stream vs. the California and Humboldt currents?
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
why don't these countries have more vineyards in latitudes similar to those of, say, Burgundy and Bordeaux?
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Umm, the Gulf Stream vs. the California and Humboldt currents?
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?

(My point was that southern hemisphere countries don't have vineyards at 45 degrees because the southern hemisphere is almost all water at that latitude.)
 
My point is that Europe has vineyards at 45 degrees because of the Gulf Stream, and if it were not for that cheerful Caribbean warmth headed up there, the vineyards would be much farther south.

You don't care about inland areas anyway, they will often be above 300m. So all you need are the coasts, and you have those at 45* south too.

Why does no one sing of the famous vineyards of Sakhalin?!
 
OK. Well, Touraine, Beaujolais, Jura, Cote d'Or, etc., are all far enough from the ocean. Also Piedmont, mostly below 300m, where obviously there's no Gulf Stream. Washington and Oregon are making names for themselves as makers of European-style wines, at 45 degrees, without the benefit of any Gulf Stream. Sakhalin, good idea!
 
Linear is the relation between latitude and radiation. Heat is more situational. Or is it? Reflective dirt, smaller local waters, canopy, aspect, convection, and etc. I am most interested in wines that can economically maximize heat and light. The gulf stream seems to put a disproportionate number of these in the eurozone.

I'm hoping to start a Detroit Lambrusco farm. Should we Kickstart that?
 
So Australia and the majority of the Southern Hemisphere is a disgrace because it hasn't planted any vineyards between its Southern-most landfall and Antarctica.....ok....gotcha.
 
AS Dave Brookes implies the reason why some Australian regions can make cabernets for example similar but different to say Bordeaux at lower latitudes is because all the water and hence winds south of Australia are bloody cold coming directly from Antarcica hence the cooling of the winds is similar in temp to the higher latitudes of the medoc. Because the levels of light is much higher however,the wines even in relatively very cool places like Coonawarra are much brighter and fruitier though with comparable acidity and tannins levels in similar years as in the Medoc. Hope this explanation is useful.

cheers

paul
 
originally posted by Dave Brookes:
So Australia and the majority of the Southern Hemisphere is a disgrace because it hasn't planted any vineyards between its Southern-most landfall and Antarctica.....ok....gotcha.
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Not because we haven't, because we can't.

Paul, thanks for the explanation, even though, cough, the Medoc is hardly a model around here. Denied a 45th parallel, we southerners do the best we can with what we have, then put the best spin possible on it, but I am not convinced. Ocean currents lower heat but don't affect light, so perhaps much of the so-called new world or modern profile comes from the greater light at lower latitudes. You suggest that it doesn't lower/alter the natural acidity and tannins. I find that hard to believe, like getting something for nothing. Perhaps that's somewhat the case in parts of Australia, but it hasn't been my experience (though I'm sure there are exceptions). Wines from warmer latitudes, even with moderating influence from currents, usually need to be acidified and have soft, commercial tannins. They may be right for some palates, but not for those geared towards Loire, Burgundy, Jura, northern Rhone, etc.
 
Am I misunderstanding the mechanics of summertime sun or do more northern (or should I say polar?) vineyards get more solar radiation in summer due to the increased sunlight? Or is there some aspect of a diminishing return due to the fact that the more polar one is the less intense the sun is due to increased atmospheric distance the sunlight travels?

What I'm trying to ask is where is the summertime maximum solar radiation? (Tropic of cancer? 45 degree latitude?) How does sunlight time relate to solar radiation in terms of latitude? I wouldn't argue that on the summer solstice that the north pole gets more solar radiation than the equator, even though it gets twice as much sunlight time. (Is solar radiation even the right term for what I'm asking?) And that ties in to the nebulous question of what grapes get out of sunlight and heat and how they behave differently with different amounts of either.

Rambling,

Kevin
 
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