Fractal analysis as a tool for delimiting guarantee of quality areas

This paper describes a zoning study performed on a vast territory of around 86,500 hectares, situated in the countryside area of La Mancha Central (Castilla-La Mancha). The aim of the study was to classify the environment according to a small number of ecological criteria, establish the relevant territorial units and generate thematic maps with the different levels of criteria employed and synthetic maps by crossing these criteria.

The disruptive effect exerted by high-power ultrasound (US) on plant cell walls, natural barriers to the diffusion of compounds of interest during the maceration of red wines, is established as the reason behind the chromatic improvement that its treatment causes. However, sometimes this improvement is not observed, especially with short maceration times. The presence of a high quantity of suspended cell wall material, which formation is favored by the sonication, could be the cause of this lack of positive results since this cell wall material has a high affinity for phenolic compounds.

In the context of the global crises of global warming, biodiversity and pollution, current agricultural practices need to be reconsidered.

The concept of terroir is defined by a set of natural and human factors. On the slopy vineyards of the Burgundian « Côte », the « Appellations d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC) » spread out according to the slope in their order of quality : « AOC Grand Cru » at the top, « AOC Premier Cru » and « AOC Village » and « Bourgogne » on the piemont. In order to correlate the hierarchy of the vintages with the evolution of the topographic and pedological criteria, two toposequences were studied, in Gevrey Chambertin (« Côte de Nuits ») and Aloxe Corton (« Côte de Beaune »).

Vine water status was measured on 96 plots of three vines inside a vineyard block of 0.28 ha during three years: 2003, 2004 and 2005. Three physiological indicators were implemented: stem water potential, carbon isotope discrimination measured on grape sugars at ripeness (δ13C) and canopy temperature measured by high resolution remote sensing. For stem water potential, measurements were taken on every single vine of each plot.