Influence of the year and the environmental factors on condensed tannins from Cabernet franc grapes

This paper investigates sustainability in European wineries. The growing body of literature on the subject of sustainability underlines the increasing attention on the environmental and social impacts of intensive and irresponsible wine production.

Irrigation management is a critical aspect in grapevine cultivation to regularize grape production and quality in areas of clear water limitation.

During ripening seed tannins evolve, as demonstrated by the taste and color changes. In this work we tried to develop an objective, easy and fast index, useful for winemakers. In this direction we propose two different spectrophotometric indexes, one related to the molecular structure and tannin subunits linkages, and the other related to the antioxidant properties. Especially the second one gave very interesting and unexpected results.

Wine grape pomace quantitatively and qualitatively represents the most important fraction of wine waste. Namely, this by-product makes ~ 20% of the total mass of vinified grapes, and it is characterized with high concentrations of polyphenolic antioxidants, as well as grape seed oil. Hence, valorization of wine pomace, as an alternative to traditionally employed disposal, has drown considerable interest in recent years. Earlier studies were mostly focused on the extraction of phenolics, while mechanisms enhancing the extraction of lipid fraction from grape pomace, as well as their impact on the grape seed oil quality are far less investigated.

Several studies demonstrated how climate and soil may be key drivers of variability at different scales.