Influence des facteurs naturels du terroir sur la maturation du raisin en Alsace

The environmental biodiversity is important to guarantee essential services to the living communities, its richness is a symptom of a minor disturbance and improves he environment biological quality.

Winemaking generates significant amounts of by-products, such as grape pomace and wine lees, which are primarily used for distillation and composting.

ln the Mid-Loire Valley, in France, for the fast twenty years a network of experimental plots has been used to analyse the terroir effect on the behaviour of the Cabernet franc variety of grape. The study of the primary leaf area (SFI) for several vintages shows that it differs greatly from one terroir to another.

Smoke impacts on wines are becoming a worldwide problem; the size and severity of wildfires increasing due to influences from changing climates.¹ For over a century, wines have been known to have a unique issue of absorbing chemical compounds derived from wildfire smoke wherein the flavor of the subsequent wine becomes ashy, rubbery, campfire-like, and smoky.² The economic impacts of a smoke-impacted wine can last for years depending on the grape varietal, costing Oregon and Washington states in the United States over a billion dollars from the 2020 wildfires, as an example.³ While years of research have indicated elevated concentrations of smoke-related compounds, such as guaiacol and syringol, in wines after smoke events, unfortunately, replicating the sensory experience using smoke-associated phenols has not had much success.⁴

Climate is one of the main drivers of spatial and temporal variability in grapevine physiology and therefore a key determinant of grape composition and final wine value. The world has warmed 1.1 °C since pre-industrial times, and the latest IPCC report indicates an additional 0.5 to 1.3 °C of warming by mid-century with continental locations warming at a greater rate than the oceans.