Viticulture and UNESCO

In 1999 the vineyard of the jurisdiction of « Saint Emilion » was granted with the prestigious label of property registered on the list of world heritage of UNESCO and this as “exceptional” cultural landscape dedicated to viticulture.

Thus it became the first world wide vineyard to be registered on this list of sites inaugurated in 1972.

It did not take much that it was made use of such idea somewhere else. It was therefore two years later, in 2001, that the Portuguese had the region of viticulture of the “Haut-Douro” which produces Porto wine listed as “a cultural landscape of an exceptional beauty which reflects at the same time its technical, social and economic evolution… (and what’s) impressed is still capitalized with benefit by owners respectful of traditions”.

Then it is in Hungary in 2002, and more precisely in the vineyard of Tokay at the North East of the country, where was honored “the long tradition of the production of viticulture of quality with its complex set of vineyards, farms, villages and small towns and with its historical labyrinth of wine cellars…illustrating all the facets of famous wines the quality and management of which are strictly being controlled since nearly three centuries.

In 2004 Portuguese presented again, and successfully, a very original vineyard, that of Pico Isle in the Azores, the second one considering the size of the archipelago. Although this vineyard has a limited surface, “the presence of viticulture, the origins of which go back to the XV century, is obvious in this extraordinary assembling of small fields, in the manors and houses dating from the beginning of the XIX century as well as in the cellars, churches and ports”.

Here is “the (Swiss) vineyard of Lavaux cultivated in terrace,” the fifth vineyard registered as such, dated 2007. It extends over approximately 30 km in length on the northern side of the Leman Lake in the heart of the canton of Vaud, “the narrow terraces supported by stony walls on strongly tilted slopes” reveal a vineyard “exceptional example of the multi secular interaction between men and their developed environment to optimize the local resources in order to produce a very appreciated wine”.

Five vineyards, moreover late revealed, on a list of about one thousand sites registered by UNESCO:  one could believe in a kind of ostracism towards one of the landscapes and one of the most typical plants of the western civilization!

Except that it is necessary to add at least seven other regions classified by UNESCO where viti-viniculture plays a large part not considered as an exclusive element of the landscape but combined with other criteria of classification!

Those regions are “Porto Venere, Cinque Terre and islands” of the Italian Ligurie (1997), “Vallée de la Loire” in France and Austrian “Wachau” (2000), region of the “Ferto-Neusieddlersee” in Austria and Hungary (2001), “Valley of the German Upper Middle Rhine” (2002), “Vallée de l’Orcia” in hinterland of Siena in Italy (2004) and the “Plaine de Stari Grad” in the Croatian Isle of Hvar (2008).

We shall note with the greatest interest that other vineyards are preparing actively their application file and thus have signed up beforehand on “the indicative lists” of the sites of their countries, compulsory steps of the course!

And so goes in France for the “climates of the Burgundian vineyard of “the Côtes de Beaune et de Nuits” and of the “Coteaux, Maisons et Caves de Champagne” while abroad only Croatia considers the application of the vineyard of Primosten (2007) and South Africa with the “wine-producing region of the Cape” (2009).

It will be finally hardly surprising that Spain, the first country in the world as for its surfaces planted with wines, has not yet considered the matter although it’s also the second country in the world if considering the number of sites registered on the list of UNESCO (43)   all categories mixed, just behind Italy (47) and even before China, France and Germany.

The same remark applies for American countries and those of the southern hemisphere such as United States, Chile, Argentina and Australia whose vineyards are not devoid of attractiveness or fame…