Impact of toasting and botanical origin on oak wood (Q. sp.) volatilome using untargeted GCxGC-ToFMS analysis

Due to climate change, the occurrence of heatwaves and drought events is increasing, with significant impact on viticulture. Common ways to adapt viticulture to a changing climate include site selection, genotype selection, irrigation management and canopy management. The latter mentioned being for instance source-sink manipulations, such as leaf removal, with the aim to delay ripening.

INTEGRAPE was a European interdisciplinary network for “data integration to maximize the power of omics for grapevine improvement” (CA17111, https://integrape.eu/), funded by the European COST Association from September 2018 to 2022. This Action successfully developed guidelines and tools for data management and promoted the best practices in grapevine omics studies with a holistic future vision of: “Imagine having all data on grapevine accessible in a single place”.

Wine is one of the most representative components of Mediterranean diet. Moderate wine intake together with food, has been positively correlated with reduced risk of many chronic diseases. This beneficial effect seems to be ascribed to elevated polyphenolic content of wine [1]. Traditional approaches for the identification of wine biomarkers consumption include targeted metabolomics that focuses on the quantification of well-defined metabolites, losing a valuable information about a massive number of compounds. On the other hand, untargeted metabolomics can disclose a large quantity of signals corresponding to potential biomarkers in a single analysis with high sensitivity and resolution.

Consumption of wine/alcoholic beverages remains a topic of great uncertainty and controversy worldwide. The term “no safe level” dominates the media communication and policy ever since population studies in 2018 [1,2] were published, which denied the existence of a J-curve and suggested that ANY consumption of an alcoholic beverage is harmful to health. The scientific evidence accumulated during the past decades about the health benefits of moderate wine consumption, were questioned and drinking guidelines considered to be too loose.

Grapes are one of the world’s primary fruit crops, and pruning activities generate high amounts of annual wood wastes [1]. These pruning shoots contain valuable phenolic compounds and could have numerous potential applications [1,2]. Consequently, the aim of this work was to evaluate the physico-chemical properties of vine pruning residues with potential as enological additives. For this purpose, grapevine shoots from 12 varieties grown in Chile were collected during the winter of 2021.