Application to the wine sector of European Convention on the landscapes

As the quality and typicity of wine are influenced by the climate, it is essential to have a good knowledge of climate variability, especially with regard to temperature, which has a great impact on vine behavior and grape ripening.

The societal pressure to reduce the use of pesticides in Switzerland is steadily increasing. Viticulture is particularly in focus due to the frequent use of fungicides to combat downy and powdery mildew.

Wine oxidation phenomena during the different processes of winemaking, aging and storage are closely related to the presence of oxygen and to the wine’s capacity for consumption.

The correlations between vine water deficit cumulated over the ripening period of grapes, assessed by ΔC13 in must sugar, and the main analytic variables of grapes are significant. As a result ΔC13 is a useful tool in zoning homogeneous areas according to their technological qualities when harvesting.

Global climate change is exerting an influence on vine phenology, leading to a decoupling of technological and phenolic maturity of grapes. This results in the modification of berry chemical composition, which can translate into wines with excessive astringency. The addition of mannoproteins (MP) to wine has been proposed as a way of mitigating this problem, since some studies have shown that MPs can modulate wine astringency. However, the mechanism underlying the astringency modulation effect of MPs is not well known and it seems to be dependent on the compositional and structural characteristics of the MP.