LAUSR

The evaluation of the variety suitability regarding each appellation’s specificities should be a strategy for maximizing the varieties’ oenological potential while contributing to the sustainable production of quality wines, keeping their typicity and rationalizing winemaking costs. Thus, the combination of several grape physicochemical attributes, modulated by climate and vineyard characteristics, providing knowledge for each grape variety’s oenological potential, is a relevant and reliable support for winemakers’ decisions. To prove this hypothesis, six mature grape varieties from three harvests, each one from three vineyard parcels with different topographical conditions from Bairrada Appellation (Portugal), were studied using analysis of variance–simultaneous components analysis (ASCA). The effects of harvest year and parcel on grape berry weight, pH, titratable acidity, total sugars, total phenolics, antiradical activity, and volatile composition in free and glycosidically-linked forms were analyzed. The compositional plasticity of autochthonous varieties (white Arinto and Bical and red Baga, Castelão, and Touriga Nacional) was observed. Sauvignon Blanc grape composition was significantly modulated by harvest. This study represents an important contribution for the maintenance of varieties’ biodiversity while contributing to establishing their peculiarities. Autochthonous varieties, if accurately exploited, can provide higher characteristic diversity than worldwide used varieties, an aspect to be more objectively taken into consideration by winemakers.