Comportement du cépage Mourvèdre dans l’aire d’Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée de Bandol

The alteration in the rainfall pattern and the increase in the temperatures associated to global climate change are already affecting wine production in many viticultural regions all around the world (1). In fact, grapes are nowadays ripening earlier from a technological point of view than in the past, but they are not necessarily mature from a phenolic point of view. Consequently, the wines made from these grapes can be unbalanced or show high alcohol content. Dramatic shifts in viticultural areas are currently being projected for the future (2).

AIM: The application of microwaves (MW) to the grape is a technique to reduce the contact time with pomace because it allows to break the cell walls of the berry.

Understanding vineyard site contribution to elemental composition of wines has, historically, been limited due to lack of continuity across multiple vintages, as well as lack of uniformity in scion clone and lack of controlled pilot-scale winemaking conditions.  We recently completed our fifth vintage, and have elemental composition characterizing wines from four vintages (2015–2018)

The notion of terroir covers multiple components, from geology, pedology, geomorphology and climatology (Doledec, 1995), to aspects that are less well identified but which also intervene in the “typicality” of wines. This justifies the “zoning” approach (Moncomble and Panigaï, 1990) to define homogeneous areas, under the same agro-viticultural management and also identified at the product level (Morlat and Asselin, 1992).

When talking about terroir, scientists and lay wine tasters, very much including wine journalists and wine growers, too often talk past one another.