Wine Scholar Guild is pleased to bring you this 5-session course developed in conjunction with Agro-Bordeaux, a public viticulture and enology school under the authority of the French Ministry of Agriculture. The curriculum explores terroir from the ground up, and is designed to give you a thorough understanding of some of the fundamental principles of viticulture, the various challenges faced by growers in the vineyard, and how the fine wine regions of the world are adapting to the changing climate to preserve the quality of their fruit.  

The course is split into 5 sessions, the first 3 sessions are in Part One here, and the remaining 2 sessions can be found in Part Two.

Explore the fundamental tenets of grape growing and see why fine wine starts in the vineyard!  In this webinar, Dr. Marc Greven will discuss grape vine anatomy, planting, pruning, yield management, canopy management, and grape maturity. The importance of canopy management will be discussed with an eye to both carbohydrate production and transpiration. Yield management will be put into context regarding its impact on grape maturity and hence wine quality. 

Selecting the proper rootstock and scion prior to planting is paramount. In this webinar, Dr. Elisa Marguerit will share her expertise with clonal selection and varieties and rootstocks variability. She will explain how to maximize the potential of a site by appropriately addressing vigor, drought, and soil composition—all with correct plant material selection. As the saying goes “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” 

Terroir is often described as “an expression of place.” While traditional definitions of this concept speak in terms of site, soil, climate and (arguably) the hand of man, Dr. Cornelis (Kees) van Leeuwen will approach the topic from an “agronomic” perspective. His research focuses on temperature, water availability, nitrogen availability and sunshine as the major drivers of terroir expression. These are all quantifiable factors! Can you literally measure the parameters of terroir? Are growers able to manage their terroir? In this webinar, we will be exploring this old topic from a new vantage point. 

Marc Greven holds a PhD degree from Lincoln University in Canterbury (New Zealand) and worked as senior research scientist for the New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food and adjunct lecturer for Lincoln University and The Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology (NMIT) in Blenheim, New Zealand. Since September 2018, Marc is an associate professor in the Viticulture and Enology program at Bordeaux Sciences Agro and coordinator and lecturer for school’s Bachelors and MSc programs. The focus of Marc’s research is viticulture, vineyard management, vine water use, carbohydrate partitioning and sustainability and how these factors relate to wine quality. 

Elisa Marguerit is an associate professor in Viticulture at Bordeaux Sciences Agro. Her teaching discusses viticulture practices such as fertilization, vigor management, experimental design and quantitative genetics. Her research activities aim to study rootstock response to water deficit. She received her PhD in 2010, working specifically on the topic of genetic architecture of water deficit responses induced by grapevine rootstock. Elisa also coordinates an experimental vineyard called the GreffAdapt plot, which was created to observe and research the agronomical characteristics of 55 rootstocks with an aim to speed up the selection of rootstocks and to analyze the relationship between conferred vigor and drought tolerance. 

Cornelis (Kees) van Leeuwen is professor of viticulture at Bordeaux Sciences Agro and at the Institut des Sciences de la Vigne et du Vin (ISVV) at the University of Bordeaux. His research focusses on the concept of terroir in viticulture, more specifically on environmental constraints and how they may influence terroir. His research and body of work also extends to the effects of climate change in viticulture and how growers can adapt to a changing environment. Kees has carried out or taken part in studies to map the different soils of numerous wine estates and appellations and he has also been a consultant for Château Cheval Blanc in Saint-Émilion for 25 years. In addition, Kees is the founder and editor of the international peer-reviewed journal ŒNO One and also writes on a regular basis for the Dutch magazine Perswijn.