Biotechnologies vine perspective workshop
The ‘Biotechnologies vine perspective’ workshop was held in Margaret River on 27 January. It was organised as a great opportunity to communicate progress on two Australian Research Council (ARC) research grants in wine grapes, and bring together teams from UWA, DAFWA, Yalumba and AWRI, as well as colleagues from across the globe.
In particular, it was a great opportunity to conceptualise the underlying genetic distinctions between clones of Cabernet Sauvignon. Featuring in the program was the opportunity to taste several experimental wines from the DAFWA and Yalumba trials of Cabernet Sauvignon clones. Clonal selection has attracted increasing attention as a means to accentuate regional identity, particularly of ‘regional heroes’ - as Cabernet is for both Margaret River and Coonawarra.
Glynn Ward (DAFWA) led the presentations with a historical perspective on the local Houghton clones of Cabernet. Richard Fennessy (DAFWA winemaker) and Peter Gambetta (Yalumba senior red winemaker) then led the tasting panel to the sensory laboratory.
Richard introduced the tasting with his ‘calibration wine’, which invited differing opinions of what terms such as ‘spice’ and ‘vegetal’ mean in the context of Cabernet. Richard instructed the panel on the framework of the tasting, and scoring protocol, before introducing the experimental wines he’d made from both the 2014 and 2015 vintages.
The wines were assessed ‘blind’ and the 21 tasters (made up of professional viticulturists and winemakers) were asked to rank the intensity of 20 predetermined aroma and flavour attributes.
The data from this sensory exercise is currently being statistically analysed in the aim to determine wine characteristics unique to each of the clones. This information will be used to compliment the genomic work on these clones and potentially link genomic and sensory differences between the clones.
Peter Gambetta then presented six clones of Cabernet Sauvignon produced from the Coonawarra wine region in SA. This exercise allowed participants an opportunity to taste and compare clones not readily available in WA. Most commented on how the styles of these wines vastly differed from the Margaret River clones from the first session.
After the tasting, four short seminars were delivered, where Dr Michael Considine continued the topic of clonal variation with some insights to the progress of the ARC grant ‘Genomic basis of clonal variation in Cabernet Sauvignon wine grapes’.
This project started late 2013 but the nature of genomic technology requires considerable planning and preliminary analysis before making the quantum leaps the technology is capable of. Dr Considine revealed some of the newer technologies now available to the project and outlined the plan to team up with a group at UC Davis, to identify 12 clones by the end of the project (end 2017).
Prof Christine Foyer then presented her insights to plant responses to aphid attack. Prof Foyer is a co-investigator on one of the ARC grants – oxygen signalling in grapevine bud dormancy – and she has studied stress responses of many plants along her career, including grapevines. However, this presentation was more hypothetical, translating knowledge from other plants to question the responses of grapevine to aphids.
Two talks then focussed on progress from the ARC dormancy project. E/Prof John (Jac) Considine presented some re-analysis of older literature on dormancy and how commercially grapevines are managed through the seasonal changes. Dr Patricia Agudelo-Romero then presented on the genetic regulation of bud burst.