Proposition of a simplified approach of the viticultural landscape

Agriculture, natural resource management and the production and sale of products such as wine are increasingly data-driven activities. Thus, the use of remote and proximal crop and soil sensors to aid management decisions is becoming commonplace and ‘Agtech’ is proliferating commercially; mapping, underpinned by geographical information systems and complex methods of spatial analysis, is widely used. Likewise, the chemical and sensory analysis of wines draws on multivariate statistics; the efficient winery intake of grapes, subsequent production of wines and their delivery to markets relies on logistics; whilst the sales and marketing of wines is increasingly driven by artificial intelligence linked to the recorded purchasing behaviour of consumers. In brief, there is data everywhere!

Opinions will vary on whether these developments are a good thing. Those concerned with the ‘mystique’ of wine, or the historical aspects of terroir and its preservation, may find them confronting. In contrast, they offer an opportunity to those interested in the biophysical elements of terroir, and efforts aimed at better understanding how these impact on vineyard performance and the sensory attributes of resultant wines. At the previous Terroir Congress, we demonstrated the potential of analytical methods used at the within-vineyard scale in the development of Precision Viticulture, in contributing to a quantitative understanding of regional terroir. For this conference, we take this approach forward with examples from contrasting locations in both the northern and southern hemispheres. We show how, by focussing on the vineyards within winegrowing regions, as opposed to all of the land within those regions, we might move towards a more robust terroir zoning than one derived from a mixture of history, thematic mapping, heuristics and the whims of marketers. Aside from providing improved understanding by underpinning terroir with data, such methods should also promote improved management of the entire wine value chain.

In grapevine, phenology from bud break to berry maturation, depends on temperature and water availability. Increases in average temperatures accelerates initiation of bud break, exposing newly formed shoots to detrimental environmental stresses. It is therefore essential to identify genotypes that could delay phenology in order to adapt to the environment. The use of different rootstocks has been applied to change scion’s characteristics, to adapt and resist to abiotic and biotic stresses[1].

Study the influence of sample preparation methods on the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) profiling for fermentative beverages by GCxGC-TOFMS analysis. METHODS: Five common sample preparation methods were tested on pooled red wine, white wine, cider, and beer. Studied methods were DHS, Liquid-liquid extraction, mSBSE, SPE and SPME. VOCs were analyzed by GCxGC-TOFMS followed by data analysis with ChromaTOF. RESULTS: The volatile organic compounds (VOCs) profiling results were very dependent on the sample preparation methods.

Aim: Regional characters relating to Shiraz in Australia are not well documented. This study aimed to characterize the sensory, chemical and climate profiles of wines from various Australian Shiraz producing regions. 

During the year 2009 we have studied the phenology and grape composition of Mencía cultivar in seven different situations (orientation and altitude) for Amandi subzone