A climatic characterisation of the sub-Appellations in the Niagara Peninsula wine region

Aromatic composition contributes mainly to the quality aroma of white wine. A natural and gradual evolution of the aroma in the bottle occurs over storage with a very low oxygen content.

It is common to find tanks in the winery with wine below their capacity due to wine transfers between tanks of different capacities or the interruption of operations for periods of a few days. This situation implies the existence of an ullage space in the tank with prolonged contact with the wine causing its absorption/oxidation. Oxygen uptake from the air headspace over the wine due to differences in the partial pressure of O2 can be rapid, up to 1.5 mL of O2 per liter of wine in one hour and 100 cm2 of surface area1 and up to saturation after 4 hours.

Increasing drought poses a challenge to viticulture, with complex impacts on grape yield and quality. The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) in Precision Viticulture offers a valuable tool to detect drought stress, capturing its spatio-temporal variability and thus, supports management strategies.

Pesticides are considered one of the main causes for arthropod decline in agriculture which in turn may affect ecosystem services such as natural pest control and soil fertility.

In many regions, climate change leads to an increase in air temperature combined with a reduction of rainfall, intensifying climatic demand and water deficits (WD) (Cardell et al. 2019), which in turn may negatively impact grapevine development, yield and grape composition (Santos et al. 2020). In addition, climate change may also increase disease pressure, leading to further yield and quality losses, besides increasing costs due to increased vineyard spraying (Santos et al. 2020) and reducing viticulture acceptability by consumers (Guichard et al. 2017). Adopting new resistant varieties appears as a promising long-term solution to better manage vine protection, but unfortunately little is known regarding their behavior in front of WD.