Main viticultural soils in Castilla – La Mancha (Spain)

Le terme ”Albariza” (du latin “albus“, blanc) déterminait à l’origine un type particulier du terrain calcaire, mais à présent il sert aussi à définir les sols et la bibliographie géologique actuelle le cite également pour de roches sédimentaires originaires du Neogene Betic.

Various molecular compounds are responsible for the complex mixture of fragrances that give wine its aroma. In particular, the ‘cooked fruit’ aroma found in red wines from hot and/or dry vintages or from the vinification of late harvested grapes has been intensively investigated in recent years. Lactones and especially γ-nonalactone were found to be responsible for the ‘cooked fruit’

Grape quality potential for wine production is strongly influenced by environmental parameters such as climate and agronomic factors such as rootstock. Several studies underline the effect of rootstock on vegetative growth of the scions [1] and on berry composition [2, 3] with an impact on wine quality. Rootstocks are promising agronomic tools for climate change adaptation and in most grape-growing regions the potential diversity of rootstocks is not fully used and only a few genotypes are planted. Little is known about the effect of rootstock genetic variability on the aromatic composition in wines; thus further investigations are needed.

Fermenting grape juice represents one of the oldest continuously maintained anthropogenic microbial environments and supports a well-mapped microbial ecosystem. Several yeast and bacterial species dominate this ecosystem, and some of these species are part of the globally most studied and best understood individual organisms. Detailed physiological, cellular and molecular data have been generated on these individual species and have helped elucidate complex evolutionary processes such as the domestication of wine yeast strains of the species Saccharomyces cerevisiae. These data support the notion that the wine making environment represents an ecological niche of significant evolutionary relevance. Taken together, the data suggest that the wine fermentation ecosystem is an excellent model to study fundamental questions about the working of microbial ecosystems and on the impact of biotic selection pressures on microbial ecosystem functioning. Indeed, and although well mapped, the rules and molecular mechanisms that govern the interactions between microbial species within this, and other, ecosystems remain underexplored. Here we present data derived from several converging approaches, including microbiome data of spontaneous fermentations, the population dynamics of constructed consortia, the application of biotic selection pressures in directed laboratory evolution, and the physiological and molecular analysis of pairwise and higher order interactions between yeast species. The data reveal the importance of cell wall-related elements in interspecies interactions and in evolutionary adaptation and suggest that predictive modelling and biotechnological control of the wine ecosystem during fermentation are promising strategies for wine making in future.

L’A.O.C. Coteaux du Languedoc est située dans le Sud de la France, dans la partie Ouest de la bordure méditerranéenne. Elle forme un vaste amphithéâtre largement ouvert sur la mer méditerranée. L’Appellation a été constituée en 1960 par le regroupement de 14 anciennes petites appellations d’origine représentant 55 communes éparpillées dans les départements de l’Aude, de l’Hérault et du Gard. Par la suite, plusieurs extensions successives ont conduit à un ensemble actuellement composé de 168 communes.