On Thursday 19 November, the 2004 Beaujolais Nouveau will be rolled out across the globe, for many the first opportunity to taste the new harvest. Has it been a vintage year, what will it be like? Every expert has his own idea....
But specialist engineers and administrations need a more comprehensive view of Europe's vineyards, and they turn to satellites for the necessary data.
Europe is one of the world's foremost wine producers, with a great variety of wines, often produced on small properties with practices handed down from generation to generation. Methods can still be largely empirical, costly and some times inappropriate in a context of strong international competition.
Three years ago, ESA initiated Bacchus, a technology and research pilot programme to obtain accurate, pan-European data on wineyards. Now managed as a consortium, it is backed by the European Commission and involves companies, research institutes and wine growers' organisations through out Europe.
Today's programme provides an overv

ENVISAT and the Bacchus Project
0.00 Opening Titles
0.40 Protecting Europe's winegrowers, the Bacchus Project aiming to use space technology and cutting edge science to ensure that European quality wines don't lose their flavour in the competitive world market. Mapping Europe's vineyards in unprecedented detail.
1.23 Europe's wine-making industry may go back to Antiquity but nowadays many vineyards are relying on technology and even looking to Space to decide how to get the best out of their land. Traditional methods are being married to information technology to fight back against the effects of globalisation. Vineyards around the world are competing for a share of the market...the wine producers of southern Europe, notably Italy, France, Spain and Portugal can only get ahead by guarding their reputation for quality.
2.04 Throughout the year, Hilde and Anne Marie take care of quality control on this vineyard in Southern France, duly recording all their findings on