Sharing the conclusions of a 10-year vineyard research project monitoring insect populations, flora, fauna & soil biodiversity in natural wine producing vineyards.

VinNatur was founded in 2006 with the aim of using the profits from organising wine fairs to finance research projects with experts in their field of viticulture and vinification. In 2021, there are approximately 200 grower-members, in 10 different countries, mainly Italy.

10 years ago, the VinNatur Association launched a collaboration with Vitenova Vine Wellness – a team of agronomists, botanists, biologists, and entomologists based in Friuli. The project started as a series of analyses of the soil but soon expanded to include the other essential elements in the vineyard. 

Now the scope is to monitor not only the composition and fertility of soils, but also the population of insects and the biodiversity of spontaneous plants present in the vineyards. The results get compared year-on-year and to other wineries in the Association. The role of the agronomists is to understand why differences – sometimes significant - occur. During the talk, we will give practical examples of these.  

Ultimately, the Vitenova team help decipher the real impact that a grower’s vineyard management style has had on that particular vineyard in that year and how the grower could improve. A decade of data collection and analysis has provided illuminating results, which Vitenova & VinNatur will help decipher in this talk.