Wine microbial diversity and cross-over applications: emerging results and future perspectives

The Douro Demarcated Region, in Northern Portugal, offers outstanding wines with unique characteristics. Due to the today’s globalized marketplace, local producers often need to further develop their cultivation techniques to remain competitive. The Association of Viticultural Development in the Douro Valley (ADVID) works as a unit of experimentation, offering services and training to meet the demands of the Douro’s vitiviniculturists.

In the Champagne vineyards, spring frosts are the cause of significant variations in the volume of the harvest which are very penalizing for the trade. This variability is reflected both in time (years without frost alternating with years with severe frosts) and in space. Certain sectors of the vineyard are in fact statistically more susceptible to frost than others, but each year no municipality can consider itself immune to this climatic accident. The objective of the study is precisely to analyze the spatial distribution of frost and to determine its main mechanisms, linked to the topography of the hillsides, their orientation but also to regional meteorological variables.

In recent years, the impact of climate change has been pushing agriculture toward the implementation of innovative production methods aimed at countering the negative consequences of climate change.

Compactness is a complex trait of V. vinifera L. and is defined ultimately by the portion of free space within the bunch which is not occupied by the berries. A high degree of compactness results in poor ventilation and consequently a higher susceptibility to fungal diseases, diminishing the quality of the fruit. The easiness to conceptualize the trait and its importance arguably contrasts with the difficulty to measure and quantify it. However, recent technical advancements have allowed to study this attribute more accurately over the last decade. Our main objective was to explore the underlying genetics determining bunch compactness by applying updated phenotyping methods in a collection of V. vinifera L. cultivars with a wide genetic diversity.

The impact of minute amounts of headspace oxygen on the post-bottling development of wine is generally considered to be very important, since oxygen, packaging and storage conditions can either damage or improve wine quality. This is reflected in the generalised use of inert bottling lines, where the headspace between the white wine and the stopper is filled with an inert gas. This experiment aimed to address some open questions about the chemistry of the interaction between wine and oxygen, crucial for decisions regarding optimal closure. While it is known that similar amounts of oxygen affect different wines to a variable extent, our knowledge of chemistry is not sufficient to construct a predictive method.