Abstract
The evaluation of the variety suitability regarding each appellation’s specificities should be a strategy for maximizing the varieties’ oenological potential while contributing to the sustainable production of quality wines, keeping their typicity and rationalizing winemaking costs. Thus, the combination of several grape physicochemical attributes, modulated by climate and vineyard characteristics, providing knowledge for each grape variety’s oenological potential, is a relevant and reliable support for winemakers’ decisions. To prove this hypothesis, six mature grape varieties from three harvests, each one from three vineyard parcels with different topographical conditions from Bairrada Appellation (Portugal), were studied using analysis of variance–simultaneous components analysis (ASCA). The effects of harvest year and parcel on grape berry weight, pH, titratable acidity, total sugars, total phenolics, antiradical activity, and volatile composition in free and glycosidically-linked forms were analyzed. The compositional plasticity of autochthonous varieties (white Arinto and Bical and red Baga, Castelão, and Touriga Nacional) was observed. Sauvignon Blanc grape composition was significantly modulated by harvest. This study represents an important contribution for the maintenance of varieties’ biodiversity while contributing to establishing their peculiarities. Autochthonous varieties, if accurately exploited, can provide higher characteristic diversity than worldwide used varieties, an aspect to be more objectively taken into consideration by winemakers.
Highlights
Sustainable viticulture has appeared as a breakthrough approach that globally aims to promote an integrated and efficient use of non-renewable natural resources, such as grape varieties, for quality wine production while keeping their typicity and safety and promoting economically viable production
Within a tiny range compared to the one determined in this work (1.3–2.1 g) (Table 2), similar values were already reported for Baga variety [25]
2012 grapes (PC2 positive) exhibited higher titratable acidity and lower sugar content. These results revealed the high sensitivity of the Castelão variety to the different weather conditions of each year: 2010 moderate weather conditions (Figure 2) seem to be proper for Castelão development, potentiating aroma and astringency to the final wines
Summary
Sustainable viticulture has appeared as a breakthrough approach that globally aims to promote an integrated and efficient use of non-renewable natural resources, such as grape varieties, for quality wine production while keeping their typicity and safety and promoting economically viable production. Its quality traits reflect the outcome of complex physiological and biochemical interactions between the grape variety and its environmental conditions (vineyard soil type and topography and climate, among others) [1], known to influence the expression of grape characteristics [3,4], and impacting wine quality [5]. This capacity of a grape variety to be modulated under variable environmental conditions is referred to as metabolic plasticity [6]. Vineyard topographical factors, such as altitude and slope, modulate grape composition, influencing grapevine vigor and grape ripening, and are directly associated with the vineyards’ resulting humidity, surrounding vegetation, sunlight exposure and shadow, orientation, and trellising [1,9]
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