Application of an in vitro digestion model to study the bioaccessibility and the effect of the intestinal microbiota on the red wine proanthocyanidins 

In order to avoid the loss of grapevine intra-varietal diversity of DOCa Rioja grape varieties, Regional Government of La Rioja established a germplasm bank with more than 1.600 accessions, whose origin lies in the prospecting and sampling of ancient vineyards located throughout the whole region. 30 clones of Tempranillo and 13 clones of Graciano were preselected and multiplied in a new vineyard for further observations. The aim of this work is to describe the first results from the physiological characterization by an optical sensor of these preselected clones, which constitute the base of a new clonal selection that aims to increase the range of available certified clones and to improve the adaptation of these varieties to future objectives and environmental conditions.

Reducing sugar accumulation in grape (Vitis vinifera L.) berries may be a way to mitigate the effect of climate change. Managing canopy and crop load is an effective way to do so, however, reducing canopy size has been demonstrated to induce undesirable effects on anthocyanins. The aim of this study was to test if an application of exogenous ABA on the grape berries of defoliated vines (⅔ of the leaves removed) can result in slower sugar accumulation while maintaining grape and wine quality. An experiment with defoliation and exogenous ABA application on directly on clusters (factorial design 2×2) was performed with ‘Tempranillo’ fruit-bearing cuttings.

The global warming phenomenon involves the frequency of extreme meteorological events accompanied by a change in rainfall distribution. Irrigation frequency (IF) affects the spatial and temporal soil water distribution but its effects on the phenolic composition of the grape have been scarcely studied. The aim of this work was to evaluate the effects of four deficit irrigation frequencies of 30 % ETo: one irrigation per day (T01), two irrigations per week (T03), one irrigation per week (T07) and one irrigation every two weeks (T15) on berry phenolic composition at harvest.

The fortress of the Herodium, built towards the end of the first century BCE/ante Cristo, on the orders of Herod the Great, Roman client king of Judea, attests the expansion of Roman influence in the eastern Mediterranean. During archaeological excavations of the Herodium in 2017[1], a winery was discovered on the ground floor of the palace, with an assortment of clay vessels in situ, including large dolia – clay fermentation vessels each capable of fermenting up to 300-400 L of wine. Thanks to the recent progresses in the field of paleogenomics[2], we could analyse the organic material consistent with grape pomace at the bottom of these vessels, by extracting and sequencing the DNA using shotgun metagenomics and targeted capture, aiming for enrichment of DNA from fermentation associated microbes.

The vineyard has experienced a general increase in yields mainly due to the elevated use of technology which caused a quality loss of grapes in more than one case. A large percentage of the Spanish vineyard is covered by a Denomination of Origin which limits the productive level of the vineyards as one of its regulations. The maximum production limit is a variable characteristic of each vineyard and is not usually regulated by agronomic criteria, and this explains the fact that each vineyard can reach high quality with a totally different yield from that set by the Denomination of Origin.