The French official catalog now includes more than 350 varieties. Each year, new varieties join the list. With, anytime, the ambition to give opportunities to meet the challenges that wine industry is facing. High hopes and expectations are based on the vine material in order to face climate change, reduction of chemicals or the ability to maintain the competitiveness.

It is 40 years since I made my first harvest of Syrah vines in the hot climate of Griffith, NSW, Australia. The commercial vineyards of the region were healthy and vigorous, extensively cultivated with heavy and wide tractors, own-rooted, flood irrigated, relatively high yielding (to 30 t/ha), hand pruned and harvested, and with non-positioned, highly-shaded canopies producing bulk wine in general.

Grapevines are cultivated on 6 out of 7 continents, between latitudes 4° and 51° in the Northern Hemisphere and between 6° and 45° in the Southern Hemisphere across a large diversity of climates (oceanic, warm oceanic, transition temperate, continental, cold continental, Mediterranean, subtropical, attenuated tropical, and arid climates).

A production system is sustainable if it meets four conditions: it is profitable, accounts for environmental and social expectations and ensures product safety. The challenges for sustainability in the vineyard and winery overlap partially. The latest Australian Wine Industry Environment Conference highlighted four aspects relevant to sustainability: profitability, water, energy and warming climate.

For the last forty years, Swiss research in Viticulture was focused on a model of sustainable production. One of its central objectives is the selection of grapevines adapted to the Swiss pedoclimatic context and highly resistant to the main cryptogamic diseases.

Spatial variability in soil properties causes variability in vine performance. Ideally, irrigation should be applied differentially throughout the vineyard in order to compensate for soil variation and optimize both fruit yield and quality. A variable rate irrigation (VRI) system was implemented in early 2013 in a 4-hectare area inside a drip-irrigated Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard measuring
12.5 total hectares.

Organic and biodynamic viticultural practices have received much attention, especially by premium grape growers worldwide. This growth is coupled by a demand for organic and alternative methods of agriculture due to increasing consumer concern regarding food quality and safety. The aim of this study was to compare vine performance, berry composition and wine quality of four management systems: Biodynamic (BD), Organic (ORG), Low Input Conventional (LCON) and High Input Conventional (HCON).

Demand and production of organic and biodynamic crops have been growing exponentially in the last decades around the world. The organically managed viticultural surface in Europe increased substantially from 43.000 ha in 1998 to 230.000 ha in 2011, corresponding to around 5.3 % of all vineyards within Europe.

Conventional vineyard practices have lead in many environmental disturbances as soil erosion, soil compaction, loss of organic matter and soil biodiversity, water contamination, … Therefore, there is an increasing interest to develop sustainable viticulture in the Champagne vineyard since 25 years: a huge program called “VITI 2000” has been developed since 1990 by CIVC in collaboration with researchers.

Algeria by its potentialities of soil and climate constitutes a natural habitat for vines, especially the indigenous vine whose genetic diversity remains to valorize. Our study is part the objective of the ampelographic characterization of 21 cultivars of vines belonging to the collection of the regional station Benchicao (Medea), for identification and determination of the relationships between them and grouped according their similarities.

This study is part of the preservation of genetic resources of Algerian grapevine. It has for object the improvement of the quality of Grafted plants produced in the nursery of five native grapevine varieties: Aberkane, Bouni, Cherchali, Ahmer de Machtras III and Ghanez, applying omega grafting on rootstock SO4.

Radicicole phylloxera (Daktulosphaira vitifoliae) is one of the major factors causing the decline of local cultivars of Algeria. Our work is part of the measurement objective of the sensitivity of 15 native vines (Vitis vinifera L. ssp. Vinifera), two rootstocks (SO4 Rupestris and Lot) and an individual V. sylvestris with regard to this formidable insect.

As alternatives to glass bottles, Polyethylene Terephtalate (PET) bottles are now used for wine packaging. Tis increase the problematic of wine oxidation due to the high O2 permeability of these materials. To face this problem, oxygen scavengers (OS) were included in PET matrix.

Since the creation of the Research Center on Rosé Wine, 3000 experimental vinifications were carried out in standardized conditions and about 2500 of them were made with pure varietals. From the results obtained, the Rosé Center created a unique database which allows knowing the behavior of more than 60 black, red, pink or gray grapes.

Since 2008, long term research has been conducted in a hilly, organically managed vineyard of cv. Sangiovese located in Northern Italy (Faenza, Ravenna), with the aim of innovating and improving the production process, by establishing highly sustainable viticultural systems.