Introduction Vines with too much yield are often maturing too slowly or producing a fruit of suboptimal quality for wine. A typical practice to reduce yield and hasten maturity with high vigor vines consists of shoot thinning. The removal of undesired shoots reduces canopy density and crop load. However, if this […]
Perhaps the single most impactful and devastating series of events from the 2017 Napa vintage were October’s wine country fires. As the final presenter of the 2017 Napa Vintage Report, Dr. Eric Hervé, PhD. of ETS Laboratories, presented on his latest work, on smoke taint studies carried out by the […]
We are wrapping up the summary of the 2017 Vintage report with the last session focussing on Phenolic extraction presented by Federico Casassa. Overview of phenolic extraction into red wines: a cellular perspective Continuing on the theme of fruit ripening and fruit maturity from our previous article, the Vintage Report’s […]
In this blog we discuss an overview of the different comparative studies involving biodynamic vs organic vs. conventional farming. Results presented by Dr. Stoll focus on what we have learnt from multiple studies comparing 3 different farming practices: Organic, Biodynamic and Conventional? Earlier results were discussed here in our Wine […]
More technical questions regarding volatile phenols management have been asked as the last grapes from 2017 get harvested in Northern California. In this blog post we discuss the limitations attached to current analytical methods and how to make the best of it. Why is it difficult to assess the risk […]
We received a large number of requests asking for practical information and scientific articles on making wine with smoke tainted grapes. Considering the devastation caused by northern California fires, we decided to share all the information we have collected regarding the effects of smoke on grapes and wine. We hope this note will provide some helpful hints […]
The Cool Night Index The Cool Night Index was created to study nocturnal conditions of grapes ripening according to the different wine-making regions (Tonietto, 1999 ; Tonietto et Carbonneau, 2004). By convention, this index is also called nycthermal index and is equivalent in the North Hemisphere to the minimum temperature […]
Where does the taste of wine come from? While most of us would refer to the grapes, winemaking techniques or vintages, few approach wine tasting from the neurological perspective. In his new book and paper, Gordon Shepherd of the Yale School of Medicine provided an explanation of how our brain mechanisms […]
The Jan-Feb issue of Vineyard & Winery Management provided an interesting discussion of a familiar, yet hard-to-quantify concept in the wine industry: terroir. The article traced the origin of the word “terroir” in the French language and explained how “terroir” has come to denote high quality thanks to the French […]
