Using multifactorial analysis to evaluate the contribution of terroir components to the oenological potential of grapes at harvest

The oenological potential of grapes at harvest depends on a combination of the major components of Terroir: the climate, the soil, the plant material, the training system and the crop management. They control the type of product that can be developed, providing adapted winemaking techniques.
Due to the high variability of each of the Terroir components, predicting the grape oenological potentialities (and consequently the final product potential) is challenging.
To address this problem, we propose here a statistical method based upon multifactorial analysis. The method was established using of data set collected from 2005 to 2011, on a network of 13 plots of cv Merlot in the Bordeaux winegrowing region. This approach showed that Terroir reacted differently to year-to-year climate variability. Some plots provided a high oenological potential for most of the vintages whereas other were very sensitive to climate variations. When applied to Burgundy, on cv Pinot and Chardonnay (11 and 8 plots, respectively) from 2000 to 2010, similar conclusion were reached.
This multifactorial analysis approach proposed here is an efficient tool to characterize the oenological potential of Terroirs. Such potential could be estimated prior to harvest, knowing the major feature of the vintage by means of climate indices.