The impact of differences in soil texture within a vineyard on vine development and wine quality

In this video recording of the IVES science meeting 2025, Jordi Ballester (Centre des sciences du goût et de l’alimentation, CNRS, INRAE, Institut Agro, Université Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, Dijon, France) and María-Pilar Sáenz-Navajas (Instituto de Ciencias de la Vid y el Vino (ICVV) (CSIC-UR-GR), La Rioja, Spain) speak about the concept of natural wine. This presentation is based on an original article accessible for free on OENO One.

Sustainable viticulture and winemaking continue to represent huge challenges, where a better knowledge about the functional role of biodiversity in the vineyard ecosystems is required.

The quality of grapevines measured by yield and must density in the northern part of Europe conditons can be characterized as a type of “cool climate” – vary strongly from year to year and from one production site to another. One hundred year observations in Johannisberg from 1890 to 1991 demonstrate for the yield formation a clear dependancy from the year combined with a steady increase in productivity; latter a proof of positive clonal selection efforts.

What if, in 25 years, most wines were dealcoholized and flavored ? What if vines were only cultivated to combat erosion, store carbon, and provide anthocyanins…? What if climate change completely changed the list of vine varieties cultivable for wine production in France? What if food stores had completely disappeared in favor of virtual platforms? And if… because the long-term future is not predetermined and therefore not knowable, because the future is open to several possibilities, because the future does not emerge from nothing but from the present which conceals heavy trends and weak signals, prospective approaches make it possible to consider the room for maneuver that actors have to promote the advent of a future, which we can hope to be chosen, at least in part.

Taints and off-flavours are one of the major concerns in the wine industry and even if the issues provoked by them are harmless, they can still have a negative impact on the quality or on the visual perception of the consumer. Nowadays, the frequency of occurrence of mousy off-flavours in wines has increased.
The reasons behind this could be the significant decrease in sulphur dioxide addition during processing, the increase in pH or even the trend for spontaneous fermentation in wine. This off-flavour is associated with Brettanomyces bruxellensis or some lactic acid bacteria metabolisms.