ISHS Acta Horticulturae 171: I International Symposium on Water Relations in Fruit Crops
WATER STATUS AND WINEGRAPE QUALITY |
| Authors: | M.G. McCarthy, B.G. Coombe |
| Abstract:
There is a widespread opinion that irrigation lowers the quality of table wine. Some of this opinion arises from the relative quality of wine made from hot arid regions where irrigation is usual; but this is a complex relationship involving more than water status. A limited amount of research work has been done using organoleptic assessment of the quality of small wine lots deriving from field experiments with irrigation treatments; the methods give a high variance and results are equivocal. Clearly, there is a need for the use of objective measures which correlate with subjective assessments of wine quality. Work done at the Australian Wine Research Institute has shown one such possibility for white table wines, namely, extraction of a group of oxygenated terpenes (which make an important contribution to wine aroma) and their measurement by a colour reaction. This method has been applied to an irrigation experiment in which fruit yields have been approximately doubled with irrigation, but with little effect on sugar concentration. While irrigation did not affect the development of "free" terpenes it did result in a significantly lower rate of development of "bound" terpenes in ripening fruit. The significance and implications of these findings are discussed. | |
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