The 23rd of may during the Enoforum congress, where 1200 person attended, the WISHELI project (funding as a part of the Rural Development Plan from Umbria’s region (measure 16 – undermeasure 16.1) was presented.
The project objective is to improve the wine longevity, particularly of the Umbrian white wines.
Stefano Ferrari from ISVEA, a company specialized in analytical services in the wine industry, presented the preliminary results obtained in collaboration with Panagiotis Arapitsas from the Edmund Mach Foundation in order to develop a test to predict the aging capacity of a wine.
The test, developed at this stage of the project with 5 wines, is based on external variable such as temperature and wine conservation time and is based on the fact, that can be explained using the Arrenius kinetics to approximate the reality, the reactions that occurs in the wine are differently sensitive to temperature.
The obtained results in this phase go up to 90 conservation days and will be validated in the second part of the project using longer conservation time.
In the presentation several variables are analyzed singularly assessing the correlation between a stay at low temperature and several short expositions to high temperature.
The most significative variables suitable to explain the differences in the wine composition between the 5 wines and between several experiment conditions (temperatures/time couples) were selected: these are related with chromatic characteristics, the polyphenol composition, some amino acids metabolites and some aromas.
The parameters that are particularly discriminatory are related to Proanthocyanidins, to coordinate CIELab and to aromatic composts: the evolution of some molecule is affected by parasite reaction, while other (for instance, the terpens) are cv-dipendents.
Moreover, an index was developed to simplify the results interpretation; a good correlation between wine stored at 13°C for 90 days and wine stored 1 day at 45°C is observed.
This predictive index will be used for the following model validation that will be performed in the second part of the project.
The WISHELI project team is composed by the wineries Famiglia Cotarella, Monrubio, Terre della Custodia, Castello delle regine, the ISVEA laboratory, Impresa Verde and the University from La Tuscia (DIBAF department)
For more information on the WISHELI project contact ISVEA
