What metabolomics teaches us about wine shelf life

Cork taint decreases the commercial value of wine as tainted wines are rejected by consumers. Although other compounds in wine and cork can also be responsible for causing a taint, 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA) is regarded as the primary cause of cork taint. As cork taint is often used in marketing campaigns against natural cork closures,

Drought poses a challenge to future viticulture, exacerbated by climate change, which increases the frequency and severity of water shortages.

Vine growers face an increasing number of decisions, both tactical and strategic, in a context where available data and constraints are on the rise, such as resources, societal, environmental, climatic, and economic factors. This has led to a growing supply of decision support systems (DSS) and softwares to manage vineyards. Facing this new complexity, growers must now consider several options: giving up the use of DSS, using systems that are compatible with each other but may limit their options, or using a single system that may be too complex to use effectively. In this context, itk has expanded its Vintel® tool, which was originally designed for grapevine water status management (irrigation, inter-row, cover-crop, etc.), to include fertilization and disease management.

INTEGRAPE was a European interdisciplinary network for “data integration to maximize the power of omics for grapevine improvement” (CA17111, https://integrape.eu/), funded by the European COST Association from September 2018 to 2022. This Action successfully developed guidelines and tools for data management and promoted the best practices in grapevine omics studies with a holistic future vision of: “Imagine having all data on grapevine accessible in a single place”.

AIM Durello is a sparkling wine produced in the Lessini mountains near Verona. The wine is made from Durella grapes, a native white grape variety with a particularly high acidity. In spite of the small production area (375 ha for only 35 producers), there is a growing interest in this product. However, little is known about the aromatic profiles of these wines. The aim of this work was to characterize the aroma profile of Durella base wines suitable for the production of Lessini Durello sparkling wine. METHODS 14 base wines from Durella grapesfrom different producers were used for this study. Solid Phase Microextraction (SPME) and Solid Phase Extraction (SPE) sampling techniques coupled to GC-MS analysis allowed to identify and quantify a total of 62 volatile compounds. RESULTS Durello base wines showed relatively high levels of vitispirane, ß-damascenone, ß-citronellol and esters.