The evolution of medieval and modern viticulture in relation to climate oscillations: From the fall of the Roman empire to the dawn of the industrial era (450–1800 CE)

This review is the second instalment of a two-part chronological framework on the climatic drivers of viticultural change, continuing directly from a companion review that traced the spread of Vitis vinifera from its Neolithic origins to the end of the Western Roman Empire ( Gentilucci and Pambianchi, 2024 ). The analysis is extended to the subsequent thirteen and a half centuries (c. 450–1800 CE), encompassing four climatically distinct phases: the Late Antique Little Ice Age (LALIA, c. 536–660 CE), the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA, c. 900–1300 CE), the volatile early fourteenth-century transition associated with the Great Famine of 1315–1317 and the Black Death, and the long Little Ice Age (LIA, c. 1300–1850 CE), whose coldest decades coincided with the Spörer and Maunder solar minima. Multi-proxy palaeoclimatic evidence, tree-ring summer-temperature reconstructions, historical grape harvest dates (GHD), and documentary climate indices are cross-referenced against land-survey records, monastic archives, and biomolecular grapevine pedigree data to reconstruct the latitudinal, longitudinal, and altitudinal shifts of wine-production areas. The review traces the contraction of Roman-era viticultural frontiers during the LALIA and their re-expansion to the highest latitudes, documented for England in the Domesday Book, during the MCA, when climatic stability also underpinned the Cistercian elaboration of terroir at Clos de Vougeot. The termination of the MCA and the Black Death produced a lasting consolidation of viticulture onto its most resilient sites. Within the LIA, cold-driven varietal selection is reflected in the genetic proliferation of Gouais blanc (Heunisch) progeny, ancestor to Chardonnay, Riesling, and Gamay, while Atlantic producers developed fortified wine styles (Port, Sherry, Madeira). The same centuries saw colonial dissemination of the grapevine to the Americas, the Cape of Good Hope, and Oceania, establishing the diversified foundation of the modern wine industry. Climate oscillation emerges as a persistent driver of the spatial, institutional, and genetic evolution of viticulture.