Changing New Zealand climate equals a changing New Zealand terroir?

Press wines play a crucial role in red winemaking, representing up to 15% of the final blend [1]. Optimizing their value is essential both economically and for maintaining wine identity, especially given evolving climatic and societal challenges. However, little recent research exists on their composition.

It is well known that the vinification of grapes at full maturation can produce rich, full-bodied wines,
with intense and complex flavour profiles. However, the juice obtained from such grapes may have very
high sugar concentration, resulting in wines with an excessive concentration of ethanol. In addition, the decoupling between technological maturity and phenolic/aromatic one due to global warming, exacerbates this problem in some wine-growing regions. In parallel with the increase of the mean alcohol content of wines on the market, also the demand for reduced alcohol beverages has increased in recent years, mainly as a result of health and social concerns about the risks related to the consumption of alcohol.

Traditionally, non-saccharomyces yeasts were deemed undesirable in winemaking, for this reason, it is a common practice to add sulphites to prevent their proliferation during the initial stages of vinification. However, the current research on yeast diversity has unveiled numerous non-saccharomyces strains possessing advantageous traits that enrich the sensory profile of wines. The genus hanseniaspora is often associated with wine fermentation and is also commonly found on grapes.

Water use efficiency is one of the most valued objectives in vine growing in mediterranean climates (de la fuente et al., 2015). Due to this, the grape growers provide different adaptation strategies according to their efficient consumption against the presumable water deficit generated under these environmental conditions. The use of non-positioned shoot systems (like sprawl, bush, etc.) Can help to achieve this objective.

The purpose of this study is to compare the skin resistance (SR) of the grapes with physico-chemical propertiess using a stong dataset and multidimentional statistical analysis .
A recent study has shown the role skin resistance plays against pest invasion but skin resistance could be a useful agronomic parameter, for example in the choice of the type of winemaking, by influencing the quantity of juice during crushing and maceration.