Tag: GIS

In my previous article, I posted The 2023 British Columbia Lieutenant Governor’s Wine Awards results. But that is just a list.  I was curious to dig deeper into the awards and find out which grape varieties were the most popular.  Here is a data analysis of the results from the Platinum, Gold, and Silver awards combined. We are a cool…

When you think of viticulture, you probably think of people in the vineyards training the vines, thinning foliage, or green harvesting.  But there is more technology being used in vineyard management than you know.  Satellite imagery, drones, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are all tools that are more commonly used by viticulturists.  My career has been in geospatial technologies since…

Have you ever wondered where the nearest BC License Retail Stores (LRS) are that sell your favourite wine, beer, or spirits is located?  I came across a web page where the LRS locations were plotted on an interactive map.  I thought I’d put it here for you so that you can use it as a resource when you need access…

Canada.  We are a small wine-producing nation.  Other countries like France and Italy dwarf our production.  Even regions within a country, like California, outproduce all the wine we make in Canada.  But we make wine.  I downloaded the XLS wine export sales data for Canada from the Canadian Vintners Association and thought if I put the data on a map…

I’ve always been a fan of the wines from Bodega Catena Zapata in Argentina for a long time.  I was first introduced to their wines when I was part of the South World Wine Society in Vancouver.  I did not know much about Argentina or Malbec, but I learned a lot as part of the Society. So it was a…

Who is Pedro Parra? A French-educated Chilean, who looks at the definition of terroir through the use of modern scientific techniques.  The Old World has many hundreds of years to experiment, but in the New World, we do not have luxury.  From my interview at the Vancouver International Wine Festival, find out how Pedro determines terroir and the best grapes to…

My journey is complete. After many emails, printing of tasting note sheets, receiving deliveries of BC Pinot Noir, writing tasting notes, locating BC Pinot Noir vineyards, correlating BC Pinot Noir wines with soil and with latitude using a GIS, and making a cool interactive BC Pinot Noir map is complete. But maybe it is also the start of a new…

From my first article posing the question, “what unique aromas and flavours may be characterized by BC’s Pinot Noir based on soil type“, I’ve led you through my process of tasting the wines, adding the tasting notes to a computerized GIS map, overlaid the tasting notes vineyard locations to a soil map of BC, and finally aggregating the flavours and…

BC’s Pinot Noirs do show unique aromas and flavours according to soil type, as I have found through my GIS analysis of soil type.  But we know that our climate, although considered cool, does show variation from the warmer regions of the South Okanagan as we move northward to Lake Country for example.  A second question I posed besides the…

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness This spring, I took my first step in my journey with the thought that maybe the different soil types in BC affect the aromas and flavours of Pinot Noir grapes.  How to…