The influence of climate variability on chemical composition of European wines : a regional scale study (Italy and Slovenia)

Abstract

The Earth’s average climate is changing: changes in global and local temperatures are modifying weather patterns, with a number of effects including an increased vulnerability of regions, economic sectors and communities. The relation between climatic conditions and yield is well known in agriculture. So is the wide range of relationships between climatic elements and the quality of the yield. Moreover, the quality of wine is strictly related to the influence of weather conditions in the different years. This project combined two kinds of analysis, namely ICP-MS and IRMS and mainly used to detect possible adulterations and geographical provenance of food, to explore the variability of chemical composition of wines in relation to the climate conditions. The results evidenced that these techniques are useful to correlate the different weather conditions in the regions where wine was produced to the chemical composition.