Planting density for Chardonnay grapevines in the south of Minas Gerais

Abstract

Brazilian southeast has potential to produce sparkling wines from Chardonnay variety in sites above 900 m. Sparkling wine quality is relate to vineyard climate and management, since they affect the vine development and grape, must and base wine compositions. In this study five planting densities, with and without shoot thinning, were compared in order to optimize field productivity and based wines quality. Chardonnay vines were subjected to five planting densities (2,000, 2,667, 4,000, 5,333 and 8,000 pl ha-1) combined to not thinning and thinning treatments, for each planting density vines were thinned to 20, 15, 10, 8 and 5 shoots per plant, respectively. Vegetative vigor, yield and grape components were analyzed for two years and must and base wine composition for one year. Increasing planting density, lower bud fruitfulness, cluster number and yield were accessed and a positive linear relation was found between grape, must and wine acidity and shading effect induced by denser treatments. Shoot thinning increased bud fruitfulness, enhancing productivity only for the highest density, and no differences were found among not thinning planting densities varying from 2,667 pl ha-1 to 8,000 pl ha-1. Planting densities from 2,667 pl ha-1 to 5,333 pl ha-1, not thinnined, are recommended to southeastern region of Brazil, since they showed better productivities and necessary acidity to provide freshness in final sparkling wines.