Smoke tainted wine – what now?

In recent years, there has been an increase in demand for non-alcoholic wine with an ethanol content of less than 0.5% v/v. The dealcoholization process can take place by various methods, such as vacuum distillation or membrane technologies like osmotic distillation. Compared to distillation, membrane systems often require multiple passes or a combination of multiple separation methods. Complete or almost complete removal of ethanol significantly changes the sensory characteristics of wine.

Wine authenticity and composition can be influenced by a range of membrane separation processes as reverse osmosis. In the context of climate change, the natural trend is to obtain wines with higher alcoholic concentration when classical winemaking methods are employed, and this may induce alteration of typicity of wines by masking the olfactory and taste properties. This study aimed to evaluate the influence of reverse osmosis techniques used for decrease of ethanol content on the stable isotopic ratios as markers for wine authenticity characteristics.

The global consumption of wine has undergone significant changes after several years of covid-19, which was the beginning of a global crisis of the current century. This pushed some people to start looking for comfort and security as they felt that the world around them was losing these benefits. In most cases, this has led to them to idea of rethinking their lives in an attempt to live better or continuing to stay true to their habits and lifestyles despite the pressure of changes. Alcohol in any form is a part of these reactions, leading to increased consumption in the early stages of a crisis, particularly in relation to anxiety.

The vineyard is capable of fixing carbon in its permanent structure from atmospheric carbon dioxide, through the process of gas exchange and the performance of photosynthesis. The photosynthetic capacity of the vineyard depends on the water resources that the plant may have at its disposal, so the amount of dry matter, derived from the processed photosynthates, that it can store will depend on the water regime of the crop, both in the annually renewable organs as in permanent parts.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), 75.866 km2 of the world is dedicated to grape cultivation. About 71.0% of the world’s grape production is destined for winemaking, 27.0% for consumption as fresh fruit and 2.0% as raisin. Grape production is mainly hindered by fungal infections, that can develop both in field and post-harvest.