Treated wastewater irrigation: how to manage water salinity without reducing its nutrients content?

Climate change impacts on both yields and quality have increased over the past decades, with the effects of extreme climate events having the most dramatic and obvious impacts. Increasing length and intensity of heatwaves associated with increased water stress necessitates a reevaluation of climate change responses of grapevine and, ultimately, a reconsideration of vineyard management practices under future conditions. Here we summarize results from a three-year field trial manipulating irrigation prior to and during heatwave events to assess impacts of water application rates on vine health and physiology, berry chemistry, and wine quality. We also highlight potential mitigation strategies for extreme heat, both in terms of water application, as well as other cultural practices that could be widely applicable.

The integration of digital technologies in vineyard management offers substantial opportunities for enhancing sustainability, efficiency, and grape quality.

Avec l’accroissement des surfaces viticoles conduites en Bio, la question de l’impact de la présence de résidus de cuivre (seul anti fongique autorisé dans l’UE dans ce cadre Règlementaire) sur le déroulement des fermentations et sur les qualités œnologiques et organoleptiques des vins s’est révélée de plus en plus cruciale.

Making high quality but affordable Pinot noir (PN) wine is challenging in most terroirs and New Zealand’s (NZ) situation is no exception. To increase the probability of making highly typical PN wines producers choose to grow grapes in cool climates on lower fertility soils while adopting labour intensive practices. Stringent yield targets and higher input costs necessarily mean that PN wine cost is high, and profitability lower, in line-priced varietal wine ranges. To understand the reasons why higher yielding vines are perceived to produce wines of lower quality we have undertaken an extensive study of PN in NZ. Since 2018, we established a network of twelve trial sites in three NZ regions to find individual vines that produced acceptable commercial yields (above 2.5kg per vine) and wines of composition comparable to “Icon” labels. Approximately 20% of 660 grape lots (N = 135) were selected from within a narrow juice Total Soluble Solids (TSS) range and made into single vine wines under controlled conditions. Principal Component Analysis of the vine, berry, juice and wine parameters from three vintages found grape berry mass to be most effective clustering variable. As berry mass category decreased there was a systematic increase in the probability of higher berry red colour and total phenolics with a parallel increase in wine phenolics, changed aroma fraction and decreased juice amino acids. The influence of berry size on wine composition would appear stronger than the individual effects of vintage, region, vineyard or vine yield. Our observations support the hypothesis that it is possible to produce PN wines that fall within an “Icon” benchmark composition range at yields above 2.5kg per vine provided that the Leaf Area:Fruit Weight ratio is above 12cm2 per g, mean berry mass is below 1.2g and juice TSS is above 22°Brix.

The aim of this work was to determine the reaction products of bisulfite with grape seed flavanols and changes therein over different storage conditions in a model wine