Terroir 2012 banner
IVES 9 IVES Conference Series 9 International Terroir Conferences 9 Terroir 2012 9 Grapegrowing soils 9 Unexpected relationships between δ13C, water deficit, and wine grape performance

Unexpected relationships between δ13C, water deficit, and wine grape performance

Abstract

Water nutrition is crucial for wine grape performance. Thus soil investigation aims at characterizing spatial and temporal variability of available water. A possible strategy is to integrate monitoring and proxies of water availability. The carbon isotope ratio δ13C, measured in the alcohol of wine, is a promising tool to determine water stress during the vine growing season and vine performance. A research study was set up to evaluate the relationships between δ13C, soil water deficit, and wine grape viticultural and oenological performance. The trial was carried out for three years in the Chianti Classico wine production district (Central Italy), on not irrigated vineyards of a premium farm. The reference variety was Sangiovese. Eleven sites were chosen for vine monitoring and grape sampling. The performance parameters were alcohol and sugar content, sugar accumulation rate, mean berry weight, and extractable polyphenols. δ13C, stem water potential, and soil water deficit, as difference between soil water content, monitored during the veraison-harvest, and the standard wilting point, were measured. δ13C resulted directly related to stem water potential and soil water deficit, and showed absence to only moderate water stress. However, the relationship with viticultural and oenological results was contrary to the expectation, that is, the performance increased when the water stress decreased. The explanation was that the viticultural husbandry was so competing for the plants (high plant density, high pruning, weak rootstock, grass cover) that the effects of water stress on grape quality were magnified. In conclusion, δ13C cannot be directly used to estimate vine performance.

DOI:

Publication date: August 28, 2020

Issue: Terroir 2012

Type: Article

Authors

Edoardo A.C. COSTANTINI (1), Alessandro AGNELLI (1), Pierluigi BUCELLI (1), Aldo CIAMBOTTI (2), Valentina DELL’ORO (2), Laura NATARELLI (1), Sergio PELLEGRINI (1), Rita PERRIA (3), Simone PRIORI (1), Paolo STORCHI (3), Christos TSOLAKIS (2), Nadia VIGNOZZI (1)

(1) CRA-ABP, Research Centre for Agrobiology and Pedology, Florence, Italy
(2) CRA-ENO Research Centre for Oenology, Asti, Italy; 3CRA-VIC Research Unit for Viticulture, Arezzo, Italy

Contact the author

Keywords

Carbon, water availability, proxy, red grape, Tuscany

Tags

IVES Conference Series | Terroir 2012

Citation

Related articles…

la caratterizzazione dell’areale viticolo “terre alte di brisighella”: aspetti metodologici e primi risultati

La zonazione viticola rappresenta un importante strumento di indagine per valutare e interpretare le potenzialità produttive e qualitative di un territorio. Con l’obiettivo di studiare come l’ambiente influisca sulla qualità dell’uva nell’areale di Brisighella, sono stati monitorati, nelle annate 2007, 2008 e 2009, 14 vigneti per la varietà Albana e 38 per la varietà Sangiovese, rappresentativi di una area vitata di circa 1000 ha.

Rootstocks of prestigious Bordeaux vineyards: implications on quality and yield

Rootstocks have been used in most of the vineyards for over a century. This may seem to be a long period, but it represents only three successive plantations.

Analysis of the oenological potentials of different oak forests in Hungary

Like France, Hungary has many oak forests used for making barrels since many years. But if the differences between the woods of the North, the East and the South-West forests of France are well known, this is probably not the case of Hungarian forests. However taking into account the essential differences of climates and soils, differences must be significant and the general name “Hungarian oak” must not have any real meaning. We have studied precisely (determination of concentrations of volatile and non-volatile wood compounds, anatomical criteria, measurement of antioxidant capacity) of oaks collected from northeastern Hungary and others collected from the Danube valley in the northwest of the country.

Mapping intra-plot topsoil diversity of Burgundy vineyards (Aloxe-Corton, France) from very high spatial resolution (VHSR) images

In this work, we present a method based on very high spatial resolution (VHSR) aerial images acquired in the visible domain and that map soil surface diversity at the hillslope

Winemaking processes discrimination by using qNMR metabolomics

AIM: Metabolomics in food science has been increasingly used over the last twenty years. Among the tools used for wine, qNMR has emerged as a powerful tool to discern wines based on environmental factors such as geographical origin, grape variety and vintage (Gougeon et al., 2019a).