Exploring high throughput secondary trait phenomics to improve grapevine breeding

Bordeaux is the largest appellation vineyard in France. This contrasting vineyard with varied terroirs offers all styles of wine, resulting from the blending of several grape varieties. If these different profiles make the renown of Bordeaux wines, it can appear as a constraint when the aim is to study Bordeaux wines in their diversity. The selection of a representative sample can be performed by a sensory analysis carried out by trained panelists or by wine professionals, which can take several forms: consensus among experts, conventional descriptive analysis, typicality or quality evaluation. However, because of time, economic, and logistical constraints, these methods have limited applications. As an alternative to classical descriptive analysis, more intuitive methods that do not require training have been proposed recently to describe wines using an expert panel such as Napping, Free Choice or Flash Profiling, CATA or RATA.

Valpolicella is a famous Italian wine-producing region. One of its main characteristic is the intensive use of grapes that are submitted to post-harvest withering. This is rather unique in the context of red wine, especially for the production of a dry red wine such as Amarone. Amarone wines produced in Valpolicella different geographic origin are anecdotally believed to be aromatically different, although there is no systematic study addressing the chemical bases of such diversity. Aroma is the product of a biochemical and technological series of steps, resulting from the contribution of different volatile molecules deriving from grapes, fermentations, and reactions linked to aging, as well as one of the most important features in the expression of the geographic identity and sensory uniqueness of a wine.

AIM: Organic production of wine in the past years has known an important augmentation. This type of cultivation practice switches synthetic phytosanitary product for copper-based protection as fungicide.

The habit of regular, moderate wine consumption, particularly with meals, is associated with protective effects from coronary heart disease. Epidemiological studies looking at myocardial protection/recovery focus mainly on the effects of red wine due to its high content in antioxidants, especially polyphenols. In several previous studies, conducted in our laboratory, we have concentrated on the effects of moderate consumption of white wine, by experimental animals (rats), gaining a significant experience in technical and procedural challenges. The scientific literature, and our past experience, suggests that rats are resilient towards consumption of full bodied, barrique red wines.

Characterize taste and mouthfeel properties of grapes elicited by the phenolic fraction (PF) of grape berries and establish relationships with chemical variables. METHODS: As many as 31 diverse grape lots of Tempranillo Tinto and Garnacha Tinta from three different regions were harvested. Grapes were destemmed and macerated in 15% of ethanol for one week and extracts were submitted to solid phase extraction. The recovered polyphenolic fraction was reconstituted in wine model and characterized by a panel of 21 wine experts employing a list of 23 taste and mouthfeel-related attributes following a rate-k-attributes methodology. RESULTS: Six significant attributes among the 31 samples differed based on ANOVA results: “dry”, “coarse”, “bitter”, “dry on tongue”, “sticky” and “watery”. PCA with VARIMAX algorithm was calculated.