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

Climate change is introducing a high variability on grape ripening, causing uncertainty, excessive spending on pesticides and eventually frustrating results in terms of the quality of the vintage, with the increasingly frequent appearance of aromatic problems associated with overripeness, raisining and greenness, which sometimes only appear in bottled wines.

Quercetin precipitation has become an increasingly common issue in red wine, often resulting in visually unpleasant sediments and diminished product quality.

The French vine selection partners network is currently made up of 40 regional partners, grouped around IFV (French Institute for Vine and Wine) and INRAE (national research institute for agriculture and environment), whose missions are preservation, selection, and innovation of our varietal diversity. The originality of this device is based on a 3-level organisation: – varietal diversity preservation, with the world reference: the INRAE’s vine genetics resources centre of Vassal-Montpellier (Marseillan, France), the world’s largest ampelographic collection, which includes nearly 6 000 accessions of cultivated Vitis vinifera from 54 countries, as well as rootstocks, interspecific hybrids, wild vines (lambrusques) and wild American and Asian species.

The concept of terroir is defined by a set of natural and human factors. On the slopy vineyards of the Burgundian « Côte », the « Appellations d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC) » spread out according to the slope in their order of quality : « AOC Grand Cru » at the top, « AOC Premier Cru » and « AOC Village » and « Bourgogne » on the piemont. In order to correlate the hierarchy of the vintages with the evolution of the topographic and pedological criteria, two toposequences were studied, in Gevrey Chambertin (« Côte de Nuits ») and Aloxe Corton (« Côte de Beaune »).

Aim: To define the uniqueness of Australian Cabernet Sauvignon wines by evaluation of the chemical composition (volatile aroma and non-volatile constituents) that may drive regional typicity, and to correlate this with comprehensive sensory analysis data to identify the most important compounds driving relevant sensory attributes.