Analysis of climate spatio-temporal variability in the Conegliano-Valdobbiadene DOCG wine district

Tropical fruit aroma is highly desirable in certain white wine styles and there is a significant group of consumers that show preference for this aroma.

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 grape maturation process is being affected by the consequences of global climate change and, as a result, there is a gap at harvest time between the technological maturity of grapes (mostly the concentration of sugar and acids) and its phenolic quality. Due to this gap, the wines elaborated using those grapes show a non-adequate phenolic composition, which results in defects on its color and astringency characteristics. Astringency is mainly related to the salivary protein precipitation because of the interaction not only with wine flavanols but also with other wine phenolics, such as flavonols or different pigments.

The evolution of wine during bottle ageing has been of great interest to ensure consistent quality over time. While the role of wine closures on the amount of oxygen is well-known [1], closures could also play other roles such as the scalping phenomenon of flavour compounds. Flavour scalping has been described as the sorption of flavour compounds by the packaging material, which could result in losses of flavour intensity. It has been reported in the literature that volatile sulphur compounds (VSC) can be scalped on wine closures depending on the type of closure (traditional and agglomerated cork, screw-cap, synthetic [2]).

In the context of increasingly hot and dry summers, the adoption of innovative irrigation technologies has become essential for maintaining grape production while minimizing water use.