Abstract
Climate change with rising temperatures and the unpredictability of rainy events during ripening leads to tough challenges for the winemakers in preserving the quality of white grape varieties. Grape quality is a complex concept that mainly refers to berry chemical composition, including secondary metabolites such as aroma compounds that in white berries play a key role in the identity of the wine. Terpenes, thiols, C13-norisoprenoids, methoxypyrazines, and nonterpenic alcohols are the most important aroma compounds in white grapes and several of them can be found as free volatiles or bound as glycoconjugate molecules. Agronomic practices in vineyards, such as biostimulant application, irrigation, defoliation, training systems, foliar fertilization, and bunch thinning, can have a positive effect on their concentration. This review aims to highlight the aromatic characteristics of the most utilized white grape cultivars and focus on agronomic techniques in the vineyard to enhance, implement, and intensify their aromatic characteristics. The purpose of this review paper is therefore to investigate the state of the art regarding the exaltation of aroma in white grapes in the scientific literature through sustainable agronomic techniques, but further future investigations are considered necessary given the uncertainty concerning some mechanisms of biosynthesis and their correlation with such agronomic practices.
Highlights
The aroma is one of the most important factors in determining wine quality, identity, and character [1]
Wine flavor can be subdivided in four classes: varietal aroma, pre-fermentative aroma, fermentative aroma, and post-fermentative aroma [15]
Eighty-one aroma compounds were found as odor active in nineteen Californian Chardonnay wines; partial least squares regression (PLSR) revealed that the ”fruity” terms were related to 2-phenylethyl acetate, linalool, and 3-methylbutyl acetate [91,92]
Summary
The aroma is one of the most important factors in determining wine quality, identity, and character [1]. Temperatures are already increasing and the grapevine physiology is modifying [21] These changes exert a profound shift in organic acid and sugar balance (primary metabolism) and in aromatic and phenolic berry compounds (secondary metabolism), and, in the resulting wine composition [22,23]. It is in this context that proper agronomic management together with the introduction of innovative and sustainable techniques assume great importance [24,25,26]. This work calls for a greater involvement of researchers in biochemical investigations essential to better understand the various mechanisms of synthesis of aromatic compounds in the perspective of climate change
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