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

Analytical methods for dating wines often rely on assessing anthropogenic and cosmogenic radionuclides, including 14C and 137Cs [1,2].

As the climate warms, the focus of concern in viticulture often turns to how higher temperatures may shift growing regions, change the character of AVAs, and alter fruit quality. However, climate warming is increasing most quickly during the winter dormancy cycle, a critical and often underappreciated portion of the grapevine life cycle. In response to decreasing temperatures and decreasing daylength, grapes initiate a series of physiological changes to enter dormancy, acquire freeze resistance, and time spring phenology such that the growing season begins after threat of frost.

Vineyards are home to a myriad of microorganisms that interact with each other and with the vines. Some microorganisms are plant pathogens, such as the oomycete Plasmopara viticola, causing grapevine downy mildew. Others have a positive effect on vine health, such as disease biocontrol agents. These beneficial plant-microbe and microbe-microbe interactions have gained more attention in recent years because they could represent an alternative to the use of fungicides in viticulture.

The Valpolicella area (Veneto Region, Italy) is famous for its high quality wines: Amarone and Recioto, both obtained from partial post-harvest dehydrated red grapes. The main cultivars used for these wines are Corvina and Corvinone. In this Region hundreds of years ago a particular training system (Pergola, cordon/cane with horizontal shoot-positioning) was developed. In the last 20 years the Guyot have been introduced in the area; now Pergola and Guyot are equally widespread in the Valpolicella area. In two different environmental conditions (hill and floodplain) two vineyards, one for each type of training system, were studied along two years (2011-2012).

Unlike most of other foods, wine sensory quality is thought to reach a peak after an aging period. In the case of the Valpolicella red wines