The key role of vineyard parcel in modifying flavor compounds of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes

Despite significant progress in grapevine research, conducting functional genetic studies at the berry level remains challenging due to the species’ physiological and developmental limitations, including its perennial growth habit, large plant size, and long juvenile phase.

Malbec grapes have been cultivated for 150 years in Argentina. In the last 20 years Argentinian Malbec wines have emerged as a commercial boom worldwide.

Newer sequencing technologies have allowed for the addition of microbes to the story of terroir. The same environmental factors that influence the phenotypic expression of a crop also shape the composition of the microbial communities found on that crop. For fermented goods, such as wine, that microbial community ultimately influences the organoleptic properties of the final product that is delivered to customers. Recent studies have begun to study the biogeography of wine-associated microbes within different growing regions, finding that communities are distinct across landscapes. Despite this new knowledge, there are still many questions about what factors drive these differences. Our goal was to quantify differences in yeast communities due to management style between seven pairs of conventional and biodynamic vineyards (14 in total) throughout Oregon, USA. We wanted to answer the following questions: 1) are yeast communities distinct between biodynamic vineyards and conventional vineyards? 2) are these differences consistent across a large geographic region? 3) can differences in yeast communities be tied to differences in metabolite profiles of the bottled wine? To collect our data we took soil, bark, leaf, and grape samples from within each vineyard from five different vines of pinot noir. We also collected must and a 10º brix sample from each winery. Using these samples, we performed 18S amplicon sequencing to identify the yeast present. We then used metabolomics to characterize the organoleptic compounds present in the bottled wine from the blocks the year that we sampled. We are actively in the process of analysing our data from this study.

Climate is a pervasive factor in the success of all agricultural systems, influencing whether a crop is suitable to a given region, largely controlling crop production and quality

Florida’s wine industry generates more than $20 billion in annual economic activity, placing the state among the top three wine markets in the United States.