Soil survey and continuous classification for terroir delineation in the “Colli Orientali del Friuli” wine production area

Validation of the phloroglucinolysis and RP-HPLC method showed selectivity and repeatability within acceptable limits for all investigated matrices. Recovery of polymeric phenols by SPE was also acceptable.

Viticulture is entangled with weather and climate. Therefore, areas currently suitable for grape production can be challenged by climate change. Winegrowers in Italy already experiences the effect of climate change, especially in the form of warmer growing season, more frequent drought periods, and increased frequency of weather extremes.
The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of climate variability and change on grape yield in Italy to provide winegrowers the information needed to make their business more sustainable and resilient to climate change. We computed a specific range of bioclimatic indices, selected by the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV), and correlated them to grape yield data. We have worked in collaboration with some wine consortiums in northern and central Italy, which provided grape yield data for our analysis.
Using climate variables from the E-OBS dataset we investigate how the bioclimatic indices changed in the past, and the impact of this change on grape productivity in the study areas. The climate impact on productivity is also investigated by using high-resolution convection-permitting models (CPMs – 2.2 horizontal resolution), with the purpose of estimating productivity in future emission scenarios. The CPMs are likely the best available option for this kind of impact studies since they allow a better representation of small-scale processes and features, explicitly resolve deep convection, and show an improved representation of extremes. In our study, we also compare CPMs with regional climate models (RCMs – 12 km horizontal resolution) to assess the added value of high-resolution models for impact studies. Further development of our study will lead to assessing the future suitability for vine cultivation and could lead to the construction of a statistical model for future projection of grape yield.

The increasing frequency of wildfires on the West Coast of the USA is seen as a significant risk for the grape and wine industry. Research has shown that perceived smoke impact in wines correlates with increases in volatile phenols (VPs) in grapes exposed to fresh smoke.

With climate change, the occurrence of wildfires has increased in several viticultural regions of the world. Subsequently, smoke taint has become a major issue, threatening the sustainability of the wine industry.

Phenolic composition is essential to wine quality (Cleary et al., 2015; Bindon et al., 2020; Niimi et al., 2020) and its assessment is a strong industrial need to quality management.