Sustainablity of vineyards in the Priorat region (NE Spain)

Agroscope is investigating the impact of yield on nitrogen (N) partitioning in grapevine and on must composition. The mechanism of N assimilation

Franciacorta is a viticultural area which extends in the hills to the South of Iseo lake in Lombardy. It is particularly famous for the production of sparkling wines obtained mostly from Chardonnay and Pinot blanc and noir grapes. The name of this territory is of medieval origin and appeared for the first time in 1277 as “Franzacurta”, from the Latin “franchae curtes”, i.e. “tax-free” monasteries. It was geographically delimited in 1429, when it was a territory of the Republic of Venezia.

Polyphenols are secondary metabolite widely distributed in plant kingdom such as in fruits, in grapes and in wine. During the winemaking process, polyphenols are extract from the skin and seed of the berries. Fining is an important winemaking step just before bottling which has an impact on wine stabilization and clarification. Most the time, fining agent are animal or vegetal protein while some of them can be synthetic polymer like PVPP or natural origin like bentonite.

Irrigation of vineyards is a matter of controversial arguments at areas of high quality wine production. Besides, the effects of the water in the plant are closer related to the water availability than to the irrigation regime.

The methodology to viticulture zoning developed and proposed by Gómez-Miguel and Sotés (1992) has been studied in order to validate it. This was the main aim of this work