Come proteggere un territorio viticolo: il punto di vista del giurista

The spatial distribution of powdery mildew is often heterogeneous between neighboring plots, with higher disease pressure in certain places

​For several years, the chemistry of taste has aroused high interest both from academics and industrials. Plant kingdom is a rich and reliable source of new taste-active compounds. Many sweet, bitter or sour molecules have been identified in various plants [1]. They belong to diverse chemical families and their sensory properties are strongly affected by slight structural modifications. As a consequence, the investigation of natural taste-active products in a given matrix appears as a major challenge for chemists. Such studies are particularly relevant in oenology since they allow a better understanding of wine and spirit taste.

Sixty five % of the agricultural area of the Basque Country located in the DO Ca Rioja corresponds to vineyards. More than 40% of it has an average slope greater than 10%, which makes it sensitive to erosive processes. Furthermore, it is foreseeable that extreme weather events (storms, hail, extreme heat and cold, etc.) will be favored due to climate change. Cover cropping can mitigate this risk, and therefore the objective of this work is to evaluate the impact that a vegetable cover has on the agronomic behavior of the vineyard, the quality of the grape and soil erosion. For this, a trial has been carried out with a Graciano variety vineyard with a slope between 10% -20% during the years 2020 and 2021. Conventional tillage management in the area has been compared (4-6 passes per year of tillage machinery) versus spontaneous vegetation cover management in the vineyard. This implies not tilling and allowing the grass of the land to colonize the range between the lines of vines, controlling their height through 1-3 mowing passes per year, always trying to affect the surface of the land as little as possible. The vegetative growth, yield and quality of the grape and wine was measured. Furthermore, erosion has been measured using Gerlasch boxes. The yield was lower in the second year of the trial in the cover crop treatment, but erosion was significantly reduced.

The UV-C light enhances oxidative processes in wine. Increasing the dose of UV-C can lead to olfactoric, gustatoric and colour changes in wine. These changes are triggered by a series of photochemical reactions such as degradation of esters, the formation of odour-active substances such as 2 aminoacetophenone through the photooxidation of amino acids. Ultimately, these reactions can lead to a reduced wine quality.

Although some wine production processes still rely on post-production evaluation and off-site laboratory analysis, the new winemaking industry is aware of a need for a better knowledge of the process to improve the properties of the final product. Thus, more and more wineries are interested in incorporating quality-by-design (QbD) strategies instead of postproduction testing because of the possibility to early detect deviations in fermentation or any other wine process. This would allow to detect unwanted situations and eventually to ‘readjust’ the process, thus minimizing rejects.