Assortment improvement is a natural process of updating varieties and improving the quality of variety assortment. The article presents the results of studying the introduced grape (Vitis vinifera) varieties in the conditions of the southeast of Kazakhstan, in particular in the bottom-mountain area of Almaty region. The beginning and the end of the main phenological phases passing for the vegetative period in a grape plant directly depended on climatic and weather conditions of this district. It is established that varieties ‘Kuibyshevsk early-maturing’, ‘Iyulsky’ and ‘Priusadebny’ have a good degree of eyes wintering buds and are able to give a yield of high quality in this area in comparison with recognized variety ‘Almaty early-maturing’.

The number of grape (Vitis sp.) cultivars is increasing every year, the focus point of recent grapevine studies are heading to producing high quality fruits for producing quality wine. A field trial with cultivar ‘Zilga’ was established in 2007 at the Estonian University of Life Sciences and in 2010 in a greenhouse. ‘Zilga’ is one of the well adopted cultivars in Estonia, which has been used mostly for producing wine and grown in open field conditions. The aim of the present experiment was to find out the yield maturity parameters of cultivar ‘Zilga’ for red wine in Estonian conditions. Data was collected from the year 2011 to 2013. The bunch weight and °Brix were determined from fresh materials, but all the other biochemical parameters were determined from frozen (-20 °C) grapes. The recommended content (20 °Brix) of soluble solids was not obtained in open field conditions, but reached to 24.1 °Brix in greenhouse conditions in 2013. Titratable acids content was higher than recommended values, ranging from 1.4 to 1.6 mg 100 gE-1 in open field and showing the lowest content (1.2 mg 100 gE-1) in greenhouse conditions. Maturity index values ranged from 117 to 224, and the optimum was reached in two years from three. The highest total phenolics content, 293 mg 100 gE-1 was obtained in 2011, while anthocyanin content was significantly increased in 2013.