Christine Pascal, Emmanuel Brenon, Nelly Champeau, Emilie Charpentier, Jean Baptiste Diéval, Stéphane Vidal
Vinventions, Enology team, France

Optimum grape maturity is defined according to the style of wine the winemaker wishes to produce. Harvest qualification is therefore of the utmost importance in determining the right date to harvest the grapes, so as to be in the best possible position to produce the desired wine profile.
In addition to traditional monitoring of sugar and acidity concentration, determining the date of sugar loading stop allows us to define harvest windows for producing a given style of wine with a given aroma and balance.
This article describes how linear sweep voltammetry can be used to determine the date of sugar loading stops in a plot. The evolution of the signal obtained from berry crush juices, the same used to determine sugar concentration, is described and the evolution of the signal explained on the basis of the phenomena observed during this phase of ripening. The results show that this technology can be used simply to determine the sugar loading stops in vine plots, and consequently the date windows to make given wine profiles. The use of this indicator to produce style-defined Sauvignon Blanc wines is presented in part 2 of this article.

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