The Hungarian system of geographical indications and the preparation of product specifications

Climate change has been influencing viticulture and changing wine profiles in the past years, and effects are expected to get worse.

Increasing temperatures worldwide are expected to cause a change in spatial distribution of plant species along elevational gradients and there are already observable shifts to higher elevations as a consequence of climate change for many species. Not only naturally growing plants, but also agricultural cultivations are subject to the effects of climate change, as the type of cultivation and the economic viability depends largely on the prevailing climatic conditions. A shift to higher elevations therefore represents a viable adaptation strategy to climate change, as higher elevations are characterized by lower temperatures. This is especially important in the case of viticulture because a certain wine-style can only be achieved under very specific climatic conditions. Although there are several studies investigating climatic suitability within winegrowing regions or longitudinal shifts of winegrowing areas, little is known about how fast vineyards move to higher elevations, which may represent a viable strategy for winegrowers to maintain growing conditions and thus wine-style, despite the effects of climate change. We therefore investigated the change in the spatial distribution of vineyards along an elevational gradient over the past 20 years in the mountainous wine-growing region of Alto Adige (Italy). A dataset containing information about location and planting year of more than 26000 vineyard parcels and 30 varieties was used to perform this analysis. Preliminary results suggest that there has been a shift to higher elevations for vineyards in general (from formerly 700m to currently 850 m a.s.l., with extreme sites reaching 1200 m a.s.l.), but also that this development has not been uniform across different varieties and products (i.e. vitis vinifera vs hybrid varieties and still vssparkling wines). This is important for climate change adaptation as well as for rural development. Mountain areas, especially at mid to high elevations, are often characterized by severe land abandonment which can be avoided to some degree if economically viable and sustainable land management strategies are available.

Wines differ from each other based on seven different factors: the type of grape; the bedrock geology and resulting soils; the climate; the soil hydrology; physiography of the site; the winemaker and the vineyard management techniques. The first five of these factors make up what the French call terroir, “the taste of the place”.

Recent studies have demonstrated the role of certain lactones, particularly 2-nonen-4-olide, and volatile thiols (3-sulfanylhexan-1-ol) in the over ripped aromas of noble rot sweet wines (Stamatopoulos et al. 2014ab). These compounds are partly formed during the maturation and under the activity of B. cinerea on grapes. This research was carried out in the vineyard of Sauternes with aim to better understand their genesis depending on the grape over-ripening on two different soil types during 3 vintages. Thus, the study was conducted, with the Sémillon grape, during vintages 2012, 2014 & 2015, at 4 stages of over-maturation of the grapes (healthy, pourri plein, pourri roti, pourri roti + 15 days) considering two vineyard plots with different soil characteristics (calcosol & peyrosol) planted with the 315 Sémillon clone and grafted on 101-14 rootstock respectively in 1981 and 1980 and cultivated with the same vineyard management. Volatile lactones were assayed by liquid-liquid extraction followed by GC/MS analysis and the precursors of 3-sulfanylhexanol by an adaptation of the method by Capone et al. 2010 (SPE-
UPLC/FTMS).

In the present work Schizosaccharomyces japonicus and Saccharomyces cerevisiae were inoculated simultaneously or in sequence in mixed fermentation trials with the aim of testing their ability to improve the overall quality of red wine