The Douro region: wine and tourism

The study aims to address the issue of resilience to climate change in viticulture through the adoption of the expert knowledge elicitation (EKE) approach.

Aims: This work aimed i) to calibrate the accuracy of estimating vineyard water status by crop water stress index (CWSI) compared to stem water potential; ii) to determine the time interval during the day that best correlates to stem water potential and iii) to understand the its usefulness.

Climate change is drastically modifying grape composition and wine quality. As consequence, must and wines are becoming unbalanced, with high sugar concentration, increased alcohol content, lower acidity, excessive astringency, color instability and also a rise in the incidence of tartaric instability is being showed.

Tyrosol (TYR) and hydroxytyrosol (HYT) are bioactive phenols present in olive oil and wine, basic elements of the Mediterranean diet. TYR is reported in the literature for its interesting antioxidant, cardioprotective and anti-inflammatory properties. In wine, its concentration can reach values as high as about 40 mg/L
[Pour Nikfardjam et al. 2007] but, more frequently, this phenol – derived from yeast metabolism of tyrosine during fermentation – is present at lower levels, generally higher in red wines compared to whites. HYT was measured for the first time by Di Tommaso et al. [1998] in Italian wines – with maximum values of 4.20 mg/L and 1.92 mg/L for red and white wines, respectively – while definitely lower concentrations have been found later in Greek samples.

Moderate wine consumption – with the meals – represents one of the beneficial components of the traditional mediterranean diet (med diet) and a positive item in the med diet score [1,2, 3]. The med diet is considered one of the best diets in the world and the world health organisation (who) identified this eating pattern as an effective strategy to prevent non-communicable diseases (ncd), since it is associated with lower disease occurrence and all-cause mortality [4] . Numerous well-conducted epidemiological studies have also reported that light-to-moderate intake of wine/alcoholic beverages is not only related to a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, but also to all-cause mortality.