Terroir or Tūrangawaewae? Expressing sense of place in an emerging New Zealand wine region

The Columbia Gorge Wine Region (CGWR) extends for about 100km along the Columbia River and includes the Columbia Gorge American Viticultural Area (AVA) and the southwest portion of the Columbia Valley AVA.

AIM: The current loss of genetic grapevine diversity is mainly due to the reduced number of varieties used for making wine. A way of preserved endangered varieties is the establishment of germplasm banks.

The yeast Metschnikowia pulcherrima is a microorganism of great biotechnological interest, both for improving winemaking processes and for other applications outside the wine supply chain.

This work gives a summary of the most important programmes about viticultural « terroirs », developed on the « Côtes du Rhône » controlled appellation area for about twenty years.

The study conducted various fermentations of different grape juices using various strains of Lachancea thermotolerans and one strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Because of the new conditions caused by climate change, wine acidity must be influenced as well as the volatile profile. Non-Saccharomyces yeasts such as L. thermotolerans are real options to mitigate the impact of climate change in wine production.