Fractal analysis as a tool for delimiting guarantee of quality areas

Smoke impacts on wines are becoming a worldwide problem; the size and severity of wildfires increasing due to influences from changing climates.¹ For over a century, wines have been known to have a unique issue of absorbing chemical compounds derived from wildfire smoke wherein the flavor of the subsequent wine becomes ashy, rubbery, campfire-like, and smoky.² The economic impacts of a smoke-impacted wine can last for years depending on the grape varietal, costing Oregon and Washington states in the United States over a billion dollars from the 2020 wildfires, as an example.³ While years of research have indicated elevated concentrations of smoke-related compounds, such as guaiacol and syringol, in wines after smoke events, unfortunately, replicating the sensory experience using smoke-associated phenols has not had much success.⁴

Hydroxytyrosol (HT) is a phenolic compound present in olives, virgin olive oil and wine. HT has attracted great scientific interest due to its biological activities which have been related with the ortho-dihydroxy conformation in the aromatic ring. In white and red wines, HT has been detected at concentrations ranging from 0.28 to 9.6 mg/L and its occurrence has been closely related with yeast metabolism of aromatic amino acids by Ehrlich pathway during alcoholic fermentation. One of the most promising properties of this compound is the neuroprotective activity against pathological mechanisms related with neurode-generative disorders including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

Wine lees represent an abundant yet largely undervalorised by-product of the winemaking industry.

In this video recording of the IVES science meeting 2025, Gonzaga Santesteban (Public University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain) speaks about rootstocks, climate change and meta-analysis. This presentation is based on an original article accessible for free on OENO One.

The characterization of the plant is the obliged pathway between the environment and the product. The responses of the plant amplify or reduce the variations of the environment, while determining directly the type and the quality of the products. These results are inscribed inside the Viticultural Terroir Unit (VTU). VTU is the complex interaction between the Basic Terroir Unit or BTU (interaction mesoclimate x soil/subsoil), the genotype (variety x rootstock), the management system, the oenological technologies. Thus, at the most complex level, a global biological triptych is found again : environment (source) x plant (structure) = produced and exchanged substances.