La place du terroir dans le processus de patrimonialisation : l’exemple des paysages culturels viticoles du patrimoine mondial de l’Unesco

Infection of the grapes with Botrytis cinerea has a tremendous impact on the resulting crop yield and quality. Well-known problems that are associated with B. cinerea are specific off-flavors, poor filterability, and brownish color in white wines. The development of a B. cinerea infection strongly depends on weather conditions and is highly variable through different vintages. Typical control measures include defoliation and the use of fungicides, which involves high personnel and material costs. They also involve a great risk, especially since the effectiveness and time point of these treatments are difficult to predict.

Viticulture is a key economic sector in the mediterranean region. However, climate change is affecting global viticulture, increasing the frequency of heatwaves and drought events.

A new process for vacuum evaporation was developed where evaporation takes place near the inner surface of a vortex produced by a rotor submerged in the liquid. Contrary to the state of the art the Vortex rotor process does not need a vacuum vessel but the rotating liquid creates a geometrically stable low pressure void surrounded by a vortex stabilized by the equilibrium between centrifugal forces and the pressure difference. First tests with water and sugar solutions at concentrations similar to grape must were conducted to verify the theoretical predictions, test the performance under different conditions and study the effect of various process parameters (Rösti et al 2015).

Wine color is one of the main organoleptic characteristics influencing its quality. It is of especial interest in red vinifications due to the economic resources that wineries have to invest for the extraction of the phenolic compounds responsible of wine color, compounds that are mainly located inside the skin cell vacuoles. Moreover, these phenolic compounds not only influence color but also other organoleptic properties such as body, mouthfeel, astringency and flavour. The transference of phenolic compounds from grapes to must during vinification is closely related with the type of grapes and the winemaking technique.

Intra-vineyard variation grape berry ripening occurs within bunches, between bunches on the same vine and between vines. Although it is assumed that such variation also occurs at the grape berry cell wall level, no study to data has investigated in any depth. Here we have used a intra-vineyard panel design to investigate pooled bunches from six vines (per panel) in the context of a winemaking scenario. The dissected vineyard was harvested by separate panels, where each panel was then subjected to a standard winemaking procedure with or without the addition of three different enzyme preparations for maceration.