Ancient and recent construction of Terroirs

In viticulture, a warming climate can have a very significant impact on grapevine development and therefore on the quality and characteristics of wines across different spatial scales, ranging from global to local. In order to adapt wine-growing to climate change, global climate models can be used to define future scenarios, but only at the scale of major wine regions. Despite the huge progress made over the last ten years in terms of the spatial resolution of climate models (now downscaled to a few square kilometres), they are not yet sufficiently precise to account for the local climate variability associated with such parameters as local topography, in spite of these parameters being decisive for vine and wine characteristics. This study describes a method to downscale future climate scenarios to vineyard scale. Networks of data loggers have been used to collect air temperature at canopy level in the Waipara winegrowing region (New Zealand) over five growing seasons. These measurements allow the creation of fine-scale geostatistical models and maps of temperature (at 100 m resolution) for the growing season. In order to model climate change at pilot site scale, these geostatistical models have been combined with regional climate change predictions for the periods 2031-2050 and 2081-2100 based on the RCP8.5 climate change scenario. The integration of local climate variability with regionalized climate change simulations allows assessment of the impacts of climate change at the vineyard scale. The improved knowledge gained using this methodology results from the increased horizontal resolution that better addresses the concerns of winegrowers. The results provide the local winegrowers with information necessary to understand current processes, as well as historical and future viticulture trends at the scale of their site, thereby facilitating decisions about future response strategies.

“Pinking” is a term used to define an abnormal pink coloration assumed by white wines in certain cases. Despite the are many hypotheses about the causes of this phenomenon, pinking still represents an issue for the wine industry. In the absence of reliable preventive strategies, wineries often rely on treatments such as charcoal fining, which is also negatively impacting wine aroma. This study aims at evaluating the potential of different fining agents based on animal or vegetal proteins to prevent wine pinking when applied at the level of must clarification. The work was carried out on Lugana wines, which is well-recognised as sensible to pinking problems. METHODS: Two experimental Lugana musts were obtained by applying a standard winemaking protocol and were then clarified with different commercial preparations based on vegetal proteins or casein, alone or in combination with PVPP. A control only using pectolytic enzyme was also prepared. Finings were carried out at 4°C for 16h, and the clear must (200 NTU) was then fermented in controlled conditions.

Bud fruitfulness is a key determinant of the potential and the actual yield. The formation of the grapevine yield spans over a period of two consecutive growing seasons (Ferrara & Mazzeo, 2023).

Cover crops are increasingly considered in Mediterranean climate vineyards due to a combination of agronomic and regulatory considerations. However, the soil under the vines themselves is typically kept free of vegetation by mechanical plowing or herbicide spraying. Taking into account that these practices may convey a number of non-favourable economic and environmental implications, and the fact that drip irrigation can ease the use of cover crops under the vines, the aim of this work was to evaluate the agronomic implications and the changes in soil physical and biological properties caused by an under-vine cover crop in a Mediterranean area.

Different yeasts were isolated from spontaneous fermentation of Assyrtiko grape must in Santorini Island, Greece. Molecular typing revealed the presence of three Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains (S9, S13, S24) and one strain of the yeast species Nakazawaea ishiwadae (N.i). The four isolated strains were further tested in laboratory scale fermentations of Assyrtiko must in pure inoculation cultures and in sequential inoculation (72 hours) of each S. cerevisiae strain with the strain of N. ishiwadae. All fermentation trials were realised in duplicate.