Among the forgotten varieties within the Chilean wine industry, ‘Carignan’ grapevines (
Vitis vinifera
L.) in the
Maule Valley, Chile, have been rediscovered by viticulturist and winemakers, producing very interesting wines
and well recognized worldwide. Phenolic compounds are secondary metabolites, and there has been much interest
in potential health benefits of polyphenols as antioxidants. The aim of this work was to study grape phenolic
composition from ‘Carignan’ vineyards growing in eight different sites of the Maule Valley during the 2016 vintage.
Phenolic compounds were analyzed by HPLC-DAD. The results showed that, as expected, the most abundant
anthocyanin, flavonol, flavanol and hydroxycinnamic acid in ‘Carignan’ grapes were malvidin-3-glc varying from
279.56 to 428.68 mg kg
-1, quercetin-3-glucoside+rutin ranging from 27.64 to 82.69 mg kg
-1, procyanidin B1 varying
from 39.13 to 72.84 mg kg
-1 and
trans-coutaric acid varying from 27.14 to 72.76 mg kg
-1, respectively.
trans-Piceid was the only stilbene identified, which ranged from 1.06 to 7.67 mg kg
-1. Climate conditions more than soil
characteristics affected grape ripening. Generally, grapes from Curtiduría (Cur) and El Peumal (Peu) presented a
faster ripening, in terms of technological maturity, than grapes harvested from the rest of the sites, regarding day of
season. In most of the phenolic compounds, grapes from Peu, presented higher concentration than grapes from the
rest of the sites. Thus, location conditioned phenolic composition in grapes. These findings are of importance for
the Chilean wine industry in relation to the viticultural management of the ‘Carignan’ variety, regarding climatic
conditions, soil characteristics and ripening within the Maule Valley.
