Wine producers are, first of all, the best grape producers in the world. It is widely believed that wine grape is not good to eat, and that table grape has a better taste. Nothing would be less true. Being 10 a table grape’s worth, 100 would be scored by wine grape.
A better cared fruit since its implantation, grown with an average yield per vine 10 times lower than any table grape vine: a cluster of table Muscat or Pizzutella comes from a vine whose production was of about 10 kilos of grape (10 clusters circa); on the other hand, a cluster of wine Sangiovese comes from a vine whose controlled average yield was of 1,5 kilos per plant (1,5 clusters).
It is easily deducible how differing the aromatic concentration will be, in the presence of perfume, in a healthy and ripen fruit. If you will ever get the chance to visit wineries in the season of ripening grape, at harvest time, ask for the honour of tasting just a bead of their grape, picking it straight from the vine: its pulp will enchant you, thick and sweet, drenched in its turgid, integer, bright and surprisingly juicy aroma. The zesty, row crunch given by a bite of any table grape will appear watery and deceitfully vegetal.
The more qualitative the constitutive fruit, the original grape, is, the more qualitative the derivative wine could also be. Key is the conditional: a perfect grape is a necessary but insufficient condition for the production of a premium wine. If it is true that an excellent wine cannot come from a lousy grape, it is just as true as the fact that an excellent fruit through an improper winemaking could turn into a lousy wine. Therefore fruit’s excellence is the first, essential condition for a fine wine’s production. Where accomplished, together with the second, that is a very good winemaking process, these two factors come to be necessary and sufficient for the production of a wine whose analytical and sensorial quality will be extraordinary.
Viticulture is the science responsible for the optimization of grape. It is a discipline that lately went through a real and fundamental revolution at global level. The latest skills and the best technical equipment are scientifically used today for the maximization of grape’s harvested qualities, being worldwide mindful of how a great wine is first of all made by nature, in the vineyard, only if well raised and served by a constantly involved man.
Not only the progressed techniques, but also the improving and spreading better economic means among wineries, small ones as well, contribute in turning a miraculous heritage of unique grapes into Italy’s great surplus: our vineyards.
Following, we will see which are the parameters that define grape’s analytical, physico-chemical, therefore sensorial quality. Then we will illustrate the agronomic aspects that mainly impact on the process of obtaining a fruit with the defined and described maximized quality.
Overall, what will be treated is the totality of cognitions and procedures that determine the viticultural factors of any wine’s quality.