Techniques of delimitation in France

The odors of wines are diverse, complex and dynamic and much research has been devoted to the understanding of their chemical bases. However, while the “basic” chemical part of the problem, namely the identity of the chemicals responsible for the different odor nuances, was satisfactorily solved years ago, there are some relevant questions precluding a clear understanding. These questions are related to the physicochemical interactions determining the effective volatilities of the odorants and, particularly, to the perceptual interactions between different odor molecules affecting in different ways to the final sensory outputs.

Drought is one of the main challenges for viticulture in the context of global change. The choice of rootstock could be leveraged for vineyard adaptation to drought as we can improve plant performance without modifying the scion variety. However, most of the existing rootstocks, selected over a century ago, have a narrow genetic background which could compromise their adaptive potential.

Wine production is a complex multi-step process and the end-product is not easily defined in terms of composition and quality due to the diversity of the raw materials (grapes) and the biological agents (yeast and bacteria) used/present during the fermentation. Furthermore, linking what happens in the vineyard to the wine fermentation and ultimately to characteristics in the wine during ageing

The terroir concept is presented as the basis of the A.O.C system, in the french vineyards. The “Anjou terroirs” programme aims at bringing the necessary scientific basisfor a rational and reasoned exploitation of the terroir. lt must lead to finalizing a lighter, more relevant integrated method of characterisation wich could be generally applied.

Fruity notes play a key role in the consumer’s appreciation of Bordeaux red wines. If literature provides a lot of knowledge about the nature of volatile compounds involved in this fruity expression, the sensory phenomena involving these compounds in mixture still need to be explored. Considering previous sensory works about the impact of esters and some overripening compounds, the goal of this work was to study the implication of perceptual interactions involving red wine odorant compounds of diverse origins and described as potentially affecting fruity aromatic expression.