This fifth course in Small Vineyard Management focuses on wine grape fruit composition and harvesting decisions. Designed for small vineyard owners, home winemakers, winemaking enthusiasts, enologists and viticulturists, this course will cover how the grapevine makes fruit sugars, phenolics and flavor precursors in the berry. Lectures and hands-on training will provide a detailed explanation of berry chemistry looking at sugar accumulation, organic acid degradation and flavonoid chemistry as affected by common viticultural practices. You will have an opportunity to work in the UC Davis Oakville Station Vineyard, learning to sample for berry chemistry and do analysis in the Robert Barone laboratory. You will also perform a berry sensory analysis of fruit under different irrigation regimes and learn the effects of irrigation practices in fruit composition and harvest decision making.
Learning Outcomes
- Understand how sugars develop in the grape
- Learn how the taste and tactile sensation compounds develop
- Learn how aroma compounds develop in the vineyard
- Ability to perform sensory analysis of the grape
- Learn the different sensory outcomes introduced by irrigation and harvesting decisions
Skills You Will Gain
- Basic fruit chemistry including sugar concentration
- pH and acidity
- Field sampling of fruit from producing vineyards
- Dilutions
- Titrations
- Spectrophotometry