Caractérisation du terroir en Espagne : méthodologie de l’évaluation et de la validation

Maintaining stable yields and quality over time is a major challenge for the wine industry. Within the context of climate change, the choice of the rootstock is an important lever for adapting to current and future climatic conditions. Within a vineyard, the choice of the rootstock depends on the environmental conditions, the scion variety and the objectives of production. Many experimental data on the performances of rootstock already exist and can guide our decision-making.

Climate change is drastically modifying grape composition and wine quality. As consequence, must and wines are becoming unbalanced, with high sugar concentration, increased alcohol content, lower acidity, excessive astringency, color instability and also a rise in the incidence of tartaric instability is being showed.

The above-ground parts of plants, which constitute the phyllosphere, have long been considered devoid of bacteria and fungi, at least in their internal tissues and microbial presence there was long considered a sign of disease. However, recent studies have shown that plants harbour complex bacterial communities, the so-called “microbiome”[1]. We are only beginning to unravel the origin of these bacterial plant inhabitants, their community structure and their roles, which in analogy to the gut microbiome, are likely to be of essential nature. Among their multifaceted metabolic possibilities, bacteria have been recently demonstrated to emit a wide range of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which can greatly impact the growth and development of both the plant and its disease-causing agents.

The study of technologic and phenolic maturation is very efficient to determinate quality potential of red grapes cultivars and clones under different maturity levels or geographic origins

The chemical composition of grape berries at harvest is one of the most important factors that should be considered to produce high quality wines. Among the different chemical classes which characterize the grape juice, the polyphenolic compound, such as flavonoids, contribute to the final taste and color of wines. Recently, an innovative non-destructive method, based on chlorophyll fluorescence, was developed to estimate the phenolic maturity of red grape varieties through the evaluation of anthocyanins accumulated in the berry skin. To date, only few data are available about the application of this method on white grape varieties.