Terroir and precision viticulture: are they compatible?

Terroir encompasses many elements, including environment, grapes and human inputs that together contribute to the final wine quality of a certain wine growing area.

The Armenian highlands are located on the northern border of western asia and stretch up to the caucasus from the north. Throughout human history, country has played an important role in connecting the civilizations of europe and the near east. The recent large-scale study about the dual domestication origin and evolution of grapes approved that in the Armenian highlands human and grapevine stories are interlaced through centuries and roots of grapevine domestication are found deep in the pleistocene, ending 11.5 thousand years ago. Findings of this study confirmed that glacial episodes distinguish wild grapes into eastern and western ecotypes around 200-400 ka.

Prematurely aged red wines are marked by intense prune and fig aromatic nuances that dominate the complex bouquet that can be achieved through bottle aging.

Grape quality potential for wine production is strongly influenced by environmental parameters such as climate and agronomic factors such as rootstock. Several studies underline the effect of rootstock on vegetative growth of the scions [1] and on berry composition [2, 3] with an impact on wine quality. Rootstocks are promising agronomic tools for climate change adaptation and in most grape-growing regions the potential diversity of rootstocks is not fully used and only a few genotypes are planted. Little is known about the effect of rootstock genetic variability on the aromatic composition in wines; thus further investigations are needed.

In the course of this study, stabilisation (lees stirring in unclarified must) with skin contact and classic white wine vinification were compared for the Sauvignon blanc and Traminer varieties in Austria. The test wines were analysed for the volatile substances esters, free monoterpenes and fruity thiols