Soil chemistry and meteorological conditions influence the elemental profiles of West European wines

Simon Blotevogel (1) , Eva Schreck (1) , Christophe Laplanche (2) , Philippe Besson (1) , Nicolas Saurin (3) , Stéphane Audry (1) , Jérôme Viers (1) , Priscia Oliva (1)

1 GET - Géosciences Environnement Toulouse
2 LEFE - Laboratoire Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Environnement
3 PECH ROUGE - Unité expérimentale de Pech-Rouge

Elemental profiles of wines have been used successfully to distinguish their geographical provenience around the world; however, underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. In this study, Ba, Ca, Mg, Mn and Sr contents were determined in 215 wines from several West European wine-growing areas using an easy-to-perform analysis based on ICP-OES. Major environmental and wine-making parameters (soil type as "calcareous" or not, rainfall, temperature and wine color) were used to explain variations within the dataset. The combined effects of wine-making processes (expressed by wine color) and soil type explained 28.5% of total variance. The effect of climatic conditions explained 24.1% of variance and could be interpreted as intensity of drought stress. Finally, carbonate occurrence in soils and climatic conditions systematically influenced the elemental composition of the wines. These findings provide insights into the mechanisms underlying elemental fingerprinting and allow prediction of which wine-growing regions can easily be distinguished based on elemental profiles as a marker of the terroir in viticulture.

Mots clés: wine composition; elemental analysis; origin tracing; environmental parameters; terroir; soil

Domaines: Autre; Ingénierie des aliments; Science des sols

Simon Blotevogel, Eva Schreck, Christophe Laplanche, Philippe Besson, Nicolas Saurin, et al.. Soil chemistry and meteorological conditions influence the elemental profiles of West European wines. Food Chemistry, 2019, 298, pp.125033. ⟨10.1016/j.foodchem.2019.125033⟩. ⟨hal-02501076⟩