Terroir and vine water relation effects on grape ripening and wine quality of Syrah/R99

Grapevine naturally endures stresses like heat, drought, and hypoxia. A recent study showed very low oxygen levels inside grape berries, linked to ethanol content.

The Douro demarcated region constitutes just over 50% of the area of mountain vineyard in the world, i.e., vineyards with slope gradients of 30% or above. Among the different (terraced) vineyard layouts, the formerly preferred wider terraces supporting two rows of vines and the currently advocated narrower single vine row, dominate the vineyards’ planting layout. The slope of these terraces, in other words, the supporting earth ramp, is a key element in these vineyards’ construction.

Sixty five % of the agricultural area of the Basque Country located in the DO Ca Rioja corresponds to vineyards. More than 40% of it has an average slope greater than 10%, which makes it sensitive to erosive processes. Furthermore, it is foreseeable that extreme weather events (storms, hail, extreme heat and cold, etc.) will be favored due to climate change. Cover cropping can mitigate this risk, and therefore the objective of this work is to evaluate the impact that a vegetable cover has on the agronomic behavior of the vineyard, the quality of the grape and soil erosion. For this, a trial has been carried out with a Graciano variety vineyard with a slope between 10% -20% during the years 2020 and 2021. Conventional tillage management in the area has been compared (4-6 passes per year of tillage machinery) versus spontaneous vegetation cover management in the vineyard. This implies not tilling and allowing the grass of the land to colonize the range between the lines of vines, controlling their height through 1-3 mowing passes per year, always trying to affect the surface of the land as little as possible. The vegetative growth, yield and quality of the grape and wine was measured. Furthermore, erosion has been measured using Gerlasch boxes. The yield was lower in the second year of the trial in the cover crop treatment, but erosion was significantly reduced.

Dimethyl sulfide (DMS) is a low molecular weight sulfur compound produced in wine during aging by the chemical degradation of S-Methyl-L-methionine (SMM). Investigating the aromatic profile of Amarone commercial wines from different wineries, it was found that DMS presented a high variation in concentration across wine samples ranging from 2.88 to 64.34 μg/L, which potentially can

The increase in the temperature and the more severe water stress conditions, trends observed in recent years as a consequence of climate change, are leading a mismatch between the technological and phenolic maturity of grapes