Adaptation of Lactobacilli towards low ph and SO₂ to develop MLF in base musts for sparkling wines

The agri-food industry is constantly searching for ingredients of high functional value, healthy and of natural origin. One species of particular interest is Vitis vinifera, due to its recognized antioxidant potential. Among the grape varieties, one group possesses these antioxidant compounds not only in the skin, but also in its pulp: Teinturier. The red grape has traditionally been used for color correction purposes in winemaking, however, its high antioxidant content transforms it into a raw material of high potential for new formulations of ingredients and foods for the health and wellness market.

The need to rationalize agricultural inputs has recently increased interest in assessing vineyard variability in order to implement variable rate input applications, so-called ‘precision viticulture’. In many viticultural areas globally, precision viticulture is already widely used such as for selective harvesting and variable rate application (VRA) of inputs such as irrigation and/or fertilizer. Robust VRA relies on having a geostatistically accurate map (of one or more vineyard attributes) requiring high sampling densities, which can be cost- and time-prohibitive to obtain. Previous work on spatial interpolation using kriging have upscaled ground-based measurements, but such upscaling strategies are applicable only when vineyard conditions are spatially continuous and satisfies the assumption of second-order stationary processes. Alternatively, mixed models that combine kriging and auxiliary information, such as the regression kriging (RK) method, are more instructive for spatial predictions. In order to improve prediction accuracies, it is therefore necessary to incorporate additional information to achieve accurate spatial patterns with low error.

The combination of cover crops with regulated deficit irrigation has been lately shown to be a good method to improve harvest quality in irrigated vineyards of Southern Europe with semiarid climate, as an alternative to the conventional management, that consists on mechanical tillage and irrigation from fruitset to veraison and from then on reduced, or even ended.

Vitis vinifera L. cv. Pinot noir can be challenging to manage in the winery as its thin skins require careful handling to ensure sufficient extraction of wine colour to promote colour stability during ageing.1 Literature has shown that fermentation with flocculent yeasts can increase red wine colour density.2 As consumers prefer greater colour density in red wines,3 the development of tools to increase colour density would be useful for the wine industry. This research explored the impact of interspecies sequential inoculation and co-flocculation of commercial yeast on Pinot noir wine colour.

Climate is an important component or determinant of terroir, especially at the regional level. One can define three levels of terroir. These are the macro– or regional scale, which applies over tens of kilometres of the landscape. The second level is the meso- scale, which applies over kilometres or hundreds of meters, at the individual vineyard scale.