Neural networks and ft-ir spectroscopy for the discrimination of single varietal and blended wines. A preliminary study.

Pesticide residues in Austrian wines have so far been poorly documented. In 250 wines, 33 grape musts and 45 musts in fermentation, no limit values were exceeded, but in some cases high lev-els (>0.100 mg/l) of single residues were found, meaning that a reduction of these levels before bottling could make sense. In the course of this study, a white and a red wine were spiked with a mix of 23 pesticide residues from the group of fungicides (including botryticides), herbicides and insecticides. The influence of the following treatments on residue concentrations and volatile profiles were investigated: two activated charcoal products, a bentonite clay, two commer-cial mixed fining agents made of bentonite and charcoal, two yeast cell wall products, and a plant fiber-based novel filter additive. The results of this study show that all the agents tested reduced both residues and aromavolatile compounds in wine, with activated charcoal having the strongest effect and bentonite the weakest. The mixed agents and yeast wall products showed less aroma losses than charcoal products, but also lower residue reduction. Plant fibers showed good reduction of pesticides with moderate aroma damage, but these results need to be con-firmed under practical conditions.

Nowadays biodiversity loss is considered as a prior environmental issue. Agricultural landscapes are particularly concerned, mainly through the specialization and intensification of farming activities which lead, at a larger scale, to landscape simplification. Landscape management would be a good means to halt biodiversity loss, but large-scale studies remain rare. The life+ project BioDiVine aims to understand biodiversity dynamics and promote sustainable conservation actions at this scale in viticulture.

The measurement of carbon isotopic discrimination of musts (δ13C) at harvest is an integrated assessment of water status during ripening of grapevine. It is an alternative to traditional measurements of water status in the field, which is crucial for understanding spatial variability of plant physiology at the vineyard scale, proven useful for delineation of management zones in precision viticulture. The aim of this work was to attune the method for the first time to California conditions across a range of areas and cultivars with different hydric behavior, and to evaluate its efficiency in delineating management zones for selective harvest in commercial vineyards.

The aromatic complexity of a wine results from the perception of the association of volatile molecules and each aroma can be categorized into different families. The “green” aromas family in red wines has retained our attention by its close link with the fruity perception. In that study, the “green” olfactory concept of red wines was considered through a strategy combining both sensory analysis and hyphenated chromatographic techniques including HPLC and MDGC (Multidimensional Gas Chromatography). The aromatic space of this concept was specified by lexical generation through a free association task on 22 selected wines by a panel of wine experts. Then, 70 French red wines were scored on the basis of the intensity of their “green” and “fruity” attributes.

Modern viticulture in Croatia and the world is mainly based on the grapevine varieties susceptible to various diseases and pests, which leads to unsustainable use of large amounts of pesticides. The sustainable development of viticulture in the future will only be possible by increasing the resistance of the grapevine through the development of new resistant varieties. Breeding programs have been launched in the leading wine-growing countries with the aim of developing resistant varieties possessing high quality level. Coratia is rich in in native grapevine varieties that are the basis of wine production, and are not included in the breeding programs of other countries.