Effects of oak barrel aging monitored by 1H-NMR metabolomics

Increasingly warm and dry climate conditions are challenging the viticulture and winemaking sector. Digital technologies and crop modelling bear the promise to provide practical answers to those challenges. As viticultural activities strongly depend on harvest date, its early prediction is particularly important, since the success of winemaking practices largely depends upon this key event, which should be based on an accurate and advanced plan of the annual cycle. Herein, we demonstrate the creation of modelling tools to assess grape ripeness, through sugar concentration monitoring. The study area, the Portuguese Côa valley wine region, represents an important terroir in the “Douro Superior” subregion. Two varieties (cv. Touriga Nacional and Touriga Franca) grown in five locations across the Côa Region were considered. Sugar accumulation in grapes, with concentrations between 170 and 230 g l-1, was used from 2014 to 2020 as an indicator of technological maturity conditioned by meteorological factors. The climatic time series were retrieved from the EU Copernicus Service, while sugar data were collected by a non-profit organization, ADVID, and by Sogrape, a leading wine company. The software for calibrating and validating this model framework was the Phenology Modeling Platform (PMP), version 5.5, using Sigmoid and growing degree-day (GDD) models for predictions. The performance was assessed through two metrics: Roots Mean Square Error (RMSE) and efficiency coefficient (EFF), while validation was undertaken using leave-one-out cross-validation. Our findings demonstrate that sugar content is mainly dependent on temperature and air humidity. The models achieved a performance of 0.65

Valpolicella is a famous Italian wine-producing region. Wines produced in its different sub-regions are believed to be aromatically different, as confirmed by recent studies in our laboratory. Aging is a very common practice in Valpolicella and it is required by the appellation regulation for periods up to four years require wines. The aim of this study was to investigate the evolution, during aging, of volatile chemical composition of Valpolicella wines obtained from grapes harvested in different sub-regions during different vintages.

In California vineyards, irrigation is considered as one of the most important decisions growers will make. Recent research has revealed that decisions of when to begin irrigation and how much water to apply have considerable consequences for final grape quality and hence wine quality. However, it is unclear whether and to what extent the average winegrape grower uses objective data to begin irrigating or to determine the amount of water to apply.

Depuis le début des années 90, les vignerons des Caves Coopératives de l’Appellation “Côtes du Rhône” se sont penchés, au sein des structures de réflexion du Syndicat Général, sur deux axes de réflexion:
– Détermination des critères de sélection et de rémunération différenciée des apports de vendange;
– Organisation des sélections de vendanges sur la base des terroirs afin d’augmenter quantitativement le potentiel de sélection au sein de l’unité de production.

Dans de précédents travaux sur le zonage “GRANDE ZONAZIONE” (GZ) (“Grand Zonage”), on a traité, entre autre, de la “GRANDE FILIERA” (GF) (Grande filière) où parmi les 54 descripteurs prévus pour lire et évaluer par exemple un zonage, sont compris aussi la Communication