VITOUR – The European World Heritage Vineyards

Aim: Early leaf removal, generally applied before flowering, is mostly conceived as a technique to control grape yield and improve the health of grapes and focused on the final objective of increasing wine quality.

Australian grape producers are facing a difficult wine market, therefore a reduction of vineyard production costs is critical.

Polyphenolic compounds are considered to have a major impact on the quality of red wines. Sensory impact, such as astringency and bitterness, stems directly from tannin composition. Thenceforth, quick analytical measurement of phenolic compounds appears to be a real challenge for winemaking monitoring and process control. Many methods were developed to analyzed polyphenols in wine, but they are time-consuming and require chemistry skills and equipment, not suitable for a rapid routine analysis. A reliable and rapid method to obtain this kind of measurement is Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy.

Plants have been shown to redistribute water between root sections and soil layers along a gradient of decreasing water availability. One benefit of this hydraulic redistribution is that water can be transported from roots in wet soil to others in dry soil, delaying the onset of water stress and increasing root longevity in dry environments. Grapevines are thought to redistribute water laterally across the trunk from wet to dry portions of the root system. However, it is unknown whether the phloem contributes to such water redistribution.

Wine cellars are affected by seasonally fluctuating workloads and face challenges especially in the harvest period connected to the required timely processing of the harvested grapes.