Geological history and landscape of the Coastal wine-growing region, South Africa

G.r.a.s.p.o. Is not only the acronym for gruppo di ricerca per la salvaguardia e preservazione dell’originalità viticola di ogni territorio (‘research group for the safeguard and preservation of the originality of every territory’s grapes’), and is not just the italian synonym for ‘raspo’ (‘peduncle’) as treccani dictionary mentions: in the veneto dialect it is the whole bunch of grapes.

In 1979, the so-called “french paradox” was proposed, that is, a correlation between wine consumption, a diet rich in saturated fats, and a low mortality from coronary heart disease. On the other hand, it has also been described that alcohol consumption has negative effects on aging and increases the risk of liver cirrhosis and cancer. However, both hypotheses are based on population studies that may present distortions due to multiple factors (geographic, diet, smoking, socioeconomic level, etc.).

For several years, the development of computer resources, and in particular of Geographic Information Systems, have allowed the emergence of a new approach to the analysis and characterization of wine-growing areas (Morlat, 1989; Laville, 1990). These methods, which make it possible to identify homogeneous areas or units of terroir, are based on crossing, statistical analysis (in particular Principal Component Analysis: PCA) and the integration of parameters describing the natural environment in which develop the vine.

AIM: Metabolomics in food science has been increasingly used over the last twenty years. Among the tools used for wine, qNMR has emerged as a powerful tool to discern wines based on environmental factors such as geographical origin, grape variety and vintage (Gougeon et al., 2019a).

One of the basic problems in the viticulture branch is the improvement of perspective technologies for both vine training systems: with vertical standing and with free position of shoots, adapted to the requirements of complex mechanization.