Viniculture in numbers

In Luxembourg, wine cultivation has a long tradition. It still plays an important economic role. The Upper Moselle region is characterised by a high variety of white vine cultivars (1).

On the east- to south-faced vineyards along the Moselle River grapevines have been cultivated since the Roman times. The total area of the Luxembourgish grape growing regions now covers 1303 ha between Schengen and Rosport over approximately 42 km along the Moselle River. Varieties in 2017 included Müller-Thurgau (23.3% of the total acreage), Pinot gris (15.2%), Auxerrois (14.8%), Pinot blanc (12.6%), Riesling (12.5%), Pinot noir (9.7%) and Elbling (6.1%) (6).

Benefits of climate change

Amongst others the vegetative period lengthens when temperatures, especially spring temperatures are increasing. Clear changes in the dates of phenological vine stages are observable in Europe (2). In Alsace, budburst and flowering events occurred about two weeks earlier in 2003 compared to 1965. The period between flowering and change of colour of the berries (véraison) shrunk by 8 days and the véraison date occurred almost 23 days earlier (3). In Murg (Switzerland), the flowering event advanced to earlier dates by 22.1 days in 47 years (4).

Previous studies predict a large potential increase in value of the vineyards at the Moselle river (5). Analyses of climate and phenological observations of white vine cultivars in the Upper Moselle region (Luxembourg and Germany) over the period 1951–2005 showed that vine phenology events, such as budburst and flowering, receed by about 2 days/decade. Budburst date and flowering events now occur earlier by about two weeks with respect to 1951 (1).

Adaptation

The significant increase of the ripening period air temperatures potentially threatens the wine typicity of the traditional grape growing regions In Luxembourg and therefore calls for specific adaptation strategies (6).

References

The references below are cited in full in a separate map 'References'. Please click here if you are looking for the full references for Luxemburg.

1. Urhausen et al. (2011)
2. e.g. Bois (2007); Jones and Davis (2000); Jones et al. (2005b); Menzel (2005), all in: Urhausen et al. (2011)
3. Duchêne and Schneider (2005), in: Urhausen et al. (2011)
4. Defila (2003), in: Urhausen et al. (2011)
5. Ashenfelter and Storchmann (2010); Storchmann (2005), both in: Urhausen et al. (2011)
6. Molitor and Junk (2019)