Organic mulches slightly influence the wine phenolic profile and sensory evaluation

Organic mulching offers numerous agronomical benefits, but its impact on wine quality remains unclear. This study assessed the effect of this practice on wine physicochemical, phenolic composition and sensory properties. Over four years, three organic mulches (grape pruning debris (GPD), straw (STR), and spent mushroom compost (SMC)) and two conventional practices (tillage (TILL) and herbicide (HERB)) were evaluated in two locations. Wines from mulching treatments exhibited higher pH, potassium, hue, and lower tartaric acid. Moreover, the SMC mulch treatment showed lower amounts of wine anthocyanins, flavonols and hydroxycinnamics, probably due to increased nutrient availability. However, no differences were detected in the wine sensory analysis. Therefore, organic mulches could be alternative practices to mitigate the consequences of climate change without significant impact on young wine's phenolic profile and sensory properties compared to HERB and TILL conventional soil management. However, future studies should focus on wine evolution during aging.

The authors thank Pernod Ricard and D. Mateos for sharing their vineyards. This research was supported by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDR) and Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MCIN) (RTI2018-095748-R-I00). A.M. thanks ERDR/MCIN for his pre-doctoral fellowship (PRE2019-089110). MP and DL thank Gobierno de La Rioja for their FPI research grants. The authors would like to thank Miguel Ángel Fernández-Recio, technical staff at the ICVV, for his UHPLC-QqQ(MS/MS) technical support and analysis performance in the anthocyanin and phenol analysis. We authors would like to remark that the UHPLC-QqQ (MS/MS) method used for the performance of the analysis was developed at the ICVV Instrumental Analysis Research Service.

Peer reviewed