Politics meets terroir. The story of Prosecco – Are GI’s just a protectionist racket?

Developments in high-throughput sequencing (HTS) technologies allow us to obtain large amounts of microbial information from wine and must samples. Thus approaches, that are aimed at characterising the microbial diversity during fermentation, can be enhanced, or possibly even replaced, with HTS-based metabarcoding. To reduce experimental biases and increase data reproducibility, we compared 3 DNA extraction methods by evaluating differences in the fungal diversity with Riesling alcoholic fermentation samples at four different vineyards. The fungal diversity profiling was done using the genetic markers ITS2 and D2 using metabarcoding. The extraction methods compared consisted of a commercial kit, a recently published protocol that includes a DNA enhancer, and a protocol based on a buffer containing common inhibitor removal reagents. All methods were able to distinguish vineyard effects on the fungal diversity, but the results differed quantitatively.

Bioactive polyphenols from grapes and wines, like stilbenes and flavonols (SaF), are often determined to nutritional evaluation, but also for many other purposes. The objective of this study was to quantify SaF in red wines from “Campanha Gaúcha”, a large and young viticultural region from South Brazil. Moreover, through statistical analysis, evaluate the influence of these compounds according to varieties, production process, harvest years and micro-regions of cultivation. A total of 58 samples of red wines were analyzed by high-performance liquid chromatography coupled to diode array detector (HPLC-DAD) for determination of trans-resveratrol (R), quercetin (Q), myricetin (M), kaempferol (K), trans-e-viniferin (V) and their precursor, cinnamic acid (C).

The evolution of wine during bottle ageing has been of great interest to ensure consistent quality over time. While the role of wine closures on the amount of oxygen is well-known [1], closures could also play other roles such as the scalping phenomenon of flavour compounds. Flavour scalping has been described as the sorption of flavour compounds by the packaging material, which could result in losses of flavour intensity. It has been reported in the literature that volatile sulphur compounds (VSC) can be scalped on wine closures depending on the type of closure (traditional and agglomerated cork, screw-cap, synthetic [2]).

Context and purpose of the study. The primary fungal diseases affecting grapevines in Europe are downy mildew and powdery mildew.

Climate change imposes increasing restrictions and risks to Mediterranean viticulture. Extreme heat and drought stress events are becoming more frequent which puts in risk sustainability of Mediterranean viticulture. Moreover row crops e.g. grapevine for wine, are increasingly prone to the impact of more intense/longer exposure time to heat stress. The amplified effects of soil surface energy reflectance and conductance on soil-atmosphere heat fluxes can be harmful for leaf and berry physiology.