Amphora Wines: To Pitch Or Not To Pitch

Aim: Early leaf removal, generally applied before flowering, is mostly conceived as a technique to control grape yield and improve the health of grapes and focused on the final objective of increasing wine quality.

The shelf life of food is defined as the period in which the product will remain safe, is certain to retain desired sensory, chemical, physical, and microbiological characteristics

The climate is the environmental factor that contributes with greater weight in the variability of the yield and the composition of the grape, therefore, it is key in the determination of the typicity of the product. Of the environmental factors, the evolution of water availability conditions, among other things, the biochemical evolution of the compounds of the grape and the type of wine to be elaborated. An integrating parameter of the hydric state of the plant is the carbon isotopic composition (δ13C). This indicator is a useful parameter to characterize the water status during the maturation period and estimate the transpiration efficiency or water use efficiency (EUA) in the vine.

Among the numerous nutrients vines extract from the soil, nitrogen is the one that interferes most with vine vigor, yield, berry constitution and wine quality. Many studies relate on the influence of various levels of nitrogen

A lot of work has been done on the impact of Botrytis on the foam of sparkling wines. This work often concerns wines produced in cool regions, where Botrytis is the dominant fungal pathogen. However, in southern countries such as Spain, in particularly hot years such as 2022, the majority fungal pathogen is sometimes Rhizopus. Like Botrytis, Rhizopus is a fungus that produces an aspartic protease.