Analysis and impact of recent climate trends on grape composition in north-east Italy

Abstract

Climate is the most relevant factor influencing the ripening of high quality grapes to produce a given wine style. This notion should be taken into account, given the increase of extreme weather events (EWE) related to climate change. Under this evolving climate scenario, North-East Italian wine regions have seen a recent expansion, potentially disregarding optimal planting choices. The use of marginal land, indeed, could lead to the establishment of vineyards in areas where it is not possible to take advantage of the best row orientation, slope and aspect. Under these conditions, the consequences of some EWE may be more severe. The objective of this study is to verify whether planting options in combination with climate conditions, may affect yield and fruit quality. An area localised in Northern Italy was analysed for row orientation and slope, taking advantage of QGIS tools. The area was also examined for climate conditions, using weather conditions and climate indices. Such variables were combined with 10-year yield and must composition of four varieties (Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, Merlot and Glera) by using linear regression. The paper reports the most significant relationships between climatic conditions and grapevine composition. The results showed high positive correlation between sugar concentration and the number of frost days during the year in three varieties. The sugar content was positively correlated with the relative humidity in June in three varieties and negatively correlated with the number of days with a temperature >25°C during the month of June in two varieties. The content of tartaric acid showed high correlations with thermal indices of May in all varieties.

Assessing Douro Vineyards Exposure to Tropospheric Ozone

“…Extreme weather has a major influence in vineyard regions. Events such as warm and cold temperature extremes, drought, extreme rain, hail, frost or thunderstorms have significant impacts in the productivity and quality of wine [24,25]. For the period 1986-2005, the Baixo Corgo region had less extreme maximum and minimum temperatures, resulting for example in less frost days (Tmin < 0 • C) or summer days (Tmax > 25 • C), when compared to Douro Superior [26].…”

The Interplay between Atmospheric Conditions and Grape Berry Quality Parameters in Portugal

“…Previous studies already demonstrated the role of some climatic variables in grape berry quality parameters [7,13,14,31,32], some of them using long-term historical data for a few variables [7]. To our knowledge, this is the only study that uses a long-time series of biochemical data in field conditions, for many berry quality aspects (berry weight, titratable acidity, pH, potential alcohol, anthocyanins and TPI): maximum of 19 years for Douro region (1999-2017) and a minimum of six years for Alentejo region (2012)(2013)(2014)(2015)(2016)(2017).…”

Distinctive phenolic accumulation response to temperature-induced by row orientation of two field-grown Vitis vinifera cultivars

“…In wine production, climate is likely the most critical factor for achieving optimal grape characteristics, and produces a desired wine style (Cogato et al, 2019). Bunch zone temperature affects the phenolic profile by changing the expression level of anthocyanin synthesis-related genes, to finally determining the color and antioxidant activities of the wine (Azuma et al, 2019;de Oliveira et al, 2015;Tang et al, 2017).…”