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The Book of Vinesprouts of Kőszeg (Hungary): a documentary source for reconstructing spring temperatures back to the eighteenth century

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Abstract

Following an age-old tradition, since 1740, in the town of Kőszeg in western Hungary, samples of grapevine shoots are annually harvested on St. George’s Day, 24 April, and then are pictorially reproduced in the so-called Book of Vinesprouts. Given the strong relationships between temperature and grapevine phenology, the book represents a potential source for reconstructing past spring temperatures. However, this document has been little utilized so far, due to high varietal heterogeneity and lingering uncertainty regarding cultivar identity. This research developed an approach to address these difficulties, by means of a single-cultivar-based modeling analysis, associated with a set of alternative hypotheses about cultivar early development for the period to be reconstructed. Each hypothesis allowed the calculation of a different past temperature reconstruction, which was evaluated against contemporary independent observational data. The results showed that all the development stages recorded before 1900 were compatible with a vine type with a very low heat requirement for bud burst. Estimates were derived from a model calibrated on a subset of drawings of unknown cultivars executed between 1875 and 1898. The model based on this data subset was the only one giving a consistent reconstruction of spring temperatures, expressed as accumulated growing degree days going back to 1740. Although some uncertainty still exists regarding the reconstruction, the research shows that the Book of Vinesprouts contains generally consistent information about spring temperatures for a period of over 269 years for this region of Hungary.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the Koszeg municipality and museum for giving the possibility to examine the vinesprouts book and to Dr. Balo Borbala (Corvinus University of Budapest) for the useful climatic information support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Consiglio per la ricerca in agricoltura e l’analisi dell’economia agraria (CRA) - Centro di ricerca per le colture industriali, Via di Corticella 133, Bologna, I-40128, Italy

    Gianni Fila

  2. Consiglio per la ricerca in agricoltura e l’analisi dell’economia agraria (CRA) - Centro di ricerca per la viticoltura, Viale XXVIII aprile 26, Conegliano, I-31015, Italy

    Diego Tomasi & Federica Gaiotti

  3. Department of Environmental Studies, Southern Oregon University, 101A Taylor Hall, Ashland, OR, 97520, USA

    Gregory V. Jones

Authors
  1. Gianni Fila
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  2. Diego Tomasi
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  3. Federica Gaiotti
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  4. Gregory V. Jones
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Correspondence to Gianni Fila.

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Fila, G., Tomasi, D., Gaiotti, F. et al. The Book of Vinesprouts of Kőszeg (Hungary): a documentary source for reconstructing spring temperatures back to the eighteenth century. Int J Biometeorol 60, 207–219 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-015-1018-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-015-1018-6

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