Identifying research opportunities at Douro Demarcated Region

Wine is a widely consumed alcoholic beverage with a high commercial value. More specifically, the worldwide consumption of rosé wine has increased by 20% since 2002[1]. But because of its high commercial value, it can become a subject of fraud, and authenticity control is necessarily required. More than one hundred polyphenols have been recently quantified in various rosé wines [2]. They are key components defining color, taste and quality of wines. Their amount and composition depend on many different factors such as grape variety, winemaking and age of the wine. In this study, the influence of geographic origin of some rosé French wines was investigated. An original and very fast UPLC-QTOF-MS method was developed and used to predict the geographic origin authenticity of rosé wines.

Polyphenols are important compounds involved in many chemical and sensory wine features. In winemaking, adding oenological tannins claims to have positive impacts on wine stability, protection from oxidation and aroma persistence. Polyphenols are antioxidant compounds by either scavenging reactive oxygen and nitrogen species or chelating Fe2+ ions (1). However, as tannins oxidation leads to the formation of highly reactive species (i.e. ortho-quinones), it is still unclear if they have an effective role toward oxidation of wine aromas (2). In this work, we aim at studying the effect of two commercial tannins (proanthocyanidins, ellagitannins) on red wine flavour (mainly aroma) before and after air exposition.

Within a research project for simulating the nitrogen turnover in vineyard soils and the nitrogen uptake by the grape vine, a previously developed plant growth model (Nendel and Kersebaum 2004) had to be evaluated. A dataset was obtained from a monitoring experiment at three vineyard sites with different soil types, conducted in the years 2003 and 2004.

Nitrogen fertilisation of grapevines is known to influence not only plant development and production yield, but also yeast assimilable nitrogen (YAN). This parameter is related to the growth of yeast

Monoterpenes are important aroma compounds in white wines. Many monoterpenes are chiral and the chiral forms have different aroma qualities.