Grapevine quality: A multiple choice issue

Over decades, the concept of grape quality has evolved emphasizing its multidisciplinary nature and that the same “desired quality” might correspond to even strikingly different compositional patterns. The review takes a long journey throughout the multiple factors impinging on grape quality, not excluding also sections devoted to table grapes. It starts with a through survey on the genetic factors influencing grape quality focusing on diversity in different compositional traits (sugar, organic acid, pH, phenolics and aromas) relating to cultivars and clones. Then, most recent knowledge about the effects of soil characteristics, nutrients, light, temperature and water availability, as standalone factors or in interaction, on grape quality are summarized. The more applied section of the review introduces the very much debated yield-quality relationship that, over years, is being interpreted with more flexibility and with greater consensus for an “optimal yield range” that within a given context can anyway reach the desired quality. The impact of the main summer pruning operations (leaf removal, shoot and cluster thinning, shoot trimming) is reviewed and special care taken to highlight most recent contributions with adjusted summer pruning developed to either adapt to climate change issues or to induce specific composition patterns. Review ends with a quick survey on methods nowadays available for fast, non-destructive grape composition assessment.