“Un grande theatro di amenissimi colli”: “tutti coltivati et abondanti di frutti eccellentissimi e di buonissime viti”

During red wine ageing or conservation, color and taste change and astringency tends to reduce. These changes result from reactions of flavan-3-ols and/or anthocyanins among which condensation reactions with acetaldehyde are particularly important. The full characterization of these reactions has not been fully achieved because of difficulties in extracting and separating the newly formed compounds directly from wine. Model solutions mimicking food products constitute a simplified medium for their exploration, allowing the detection of the newly formed compounds, their isolation, and their structure elucidation.

A terroir can be defined as a natural unit that is characterised by a specific agricultural potential, which is imparted by natural environmental features, and is reflected in the characteristics of the final product.

Under current climate change pressures, obtaining grapes with adequate acidity at harvest is one of the main challenges for growers, especially if the goal is producing sparkling wines. This issue arises from two main occurrences: i) higher temperatures enhance degradation of malic acid; ii) grape maturity may occur under suboptimal climatic conditions due to an advanced phenology.

In the Bordeaux vineyards, press red wine represents about 15% of the volume of wines. Valuing this large volume of press wine is necessary from an economic point of view, of course, but also because of their organoleptic contribution to the blend. Nevertheless, there is a lack of recent knowledge on the composition of press wines. This work aims to establish an initial assessment of their composition (aromatic and polyphenolic) and to set up hypothesis on to the links with their sensorial identity.

A work involving the finding, the description and the recovery of old grapevine varieties from the north and north east of Spain was begun in the CSIC in the year 1987.