Albemarle Terroir

Albemarle Terroir is supposed to focus on the terroir of Albemarle County and Charlottesville, VA in an effort to discuss what makes Albemarle Wine unique. The Blog is a platform for me to learn more about the effects of climate on wine and is a great excuse to dive into some climate data. I’ve discussed [...]

Last week on the way back from Lynchburg, VA to Charlottesville, VA I stopped in at Rebec Vineyards, which is just north of Amherst, VA.    The vineyard is located in a beautiful setting just off Highway 29 with several acres of vines surrounding the building where tastings are available. I was albe to speak to [...]

I recently created a simple wine quality index to compare the vintage notes of the Chateau Montelena to daily weather records from St. Helena, CA.       In the post,  I used the variables of primary importance from Ashenfelter et al. 1995.  Since I did not have market pricing data to estimate the value [...]

The New Zealand Winegrowers have announced the statistics and outlook on quality on the 2009 vintage recently and they are quite positive. As can be expected, weather is believed to have an influence. To quote a quote from the article: “We enjoyed a very good growing season this year. Some early humidity and weather pressure [...]

I came across an article describing the effects of recent heat in Padthaway (Australia) wine quality. The last sentence is quite interesting:  “and the heat damage to the grapes means 2009 will not be one of the great years for wine quality.”   This and other recent readings suggest that a wine quality index must include [...]

I came across an interesting page at the web site of the Chateau Montelena, located in Calistoga, CA.   Thier Vintage Summary page discusses the weather and climate conditions of each vintage year and provides a few notes regarding each vintage.    Clearly I had to find some weather data and apply a bit of [...]

The Daily Progress, the local Charlottesville, VA daily newspaper, published an article today entitled “Welcome Weather for Wineries.”   The article discusses how the weather so far in 2009 has been supportive of high quality, high yield grapes.

A quick update to follow up on my suggestion that the weather station at Bordeaux-Merignac airport moved sometime in 1987 or 1988.  For a quick analysis I accessed GSOD  data from a nearby weather station at the Cazuax, France airport.    Cazaux is approximately 15 miles to the southwest of Bordeaux, close to the Atlantic [...]