Sensory analysis is an essential component of oenology, offering valuable insights into wine quality that influence decision-making in viticulture and winemaking.
The growing demand for non-alcoholic beverages, driven by health-conscious consumers and shifting social norms, has positioned dealcoholized wines as a promising alternative in the global beverage industry (Akhtar et al., 2025, in press; Kakroo, 2024).
Climate change is introducing a high variability on grape ripening, causing uncertainty, excessive spending on pesticides and eventually frustrating results in terms of the quality of the vintage, with the increasingly frequent appearance of aromatic problems associated with overripeness, raisining and greenness, which sometimes only appear in bottled wines.
Oxygen management is crucial in terms of wine quality. Even more for white and rosé wines, which are less protected against oxidation than reds due to the lower levels of antioxidant polyphenols. This need is due to the existence of equilibria between chemical forms depending on the redox potential.
In the context of the three global crises of global warming, loss of biodiversity and environmental pollution, current agricultural practices need to be reconsidered [1]. Viticulture in particular can contribute to this by optimising plant protection [2].
Increasing wildfire frequency in the United States has led to the indirect impact of smoke in vineyards, affecting grape quality and wine sensory attributes, commonly called "smoke taint”.
The production of sparkling wines requires sugars for the second fermentation. The Solid Rectified Concentrated Must (SRCM) is a water free crystalline form of grape sugar, offering a purer, more stable, and easier-to-use alternative to the liquid Rectified Concentrated Must (RCM).
Many varietal white wines have aroma qualities that incorporate various tropical fruit aromas. These tropical fruit aromas are found to be considered positive qualities of the wines with consumers having positive emotional responses [1].
It is widely known the impact that oxidation has on wine sensory degradation and eventually, in the shortening of its longevity.
Under standard wine tasting conditions, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) responsible for the wine’s bouquet progressively invade the chemical space perceived by the consumer in the glass headspace.
One of the major issues for wine production in Australia is the management and eradication of powdery and downy mildews and the associated yield losses they present, costing Australian grape growers upwards of AUD$160M per annum [1].
Right after serving a sparkling wine into a glass, thousands of rising and bursting bubbles convey gas-phase CO2 and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the headspace above the champagne surface, thus progressively modifying the gaseous chemical space perceived by the consumer [1].