Title: optimization of agronomical and technological parameters of Ribolla Gialla for the production of quality sparkling wine

Supervisor: Dr. Urška Vrhovšek (Edmund Mach Foundation)

Ribolla Gialla is an old grape variety mostly cultivated today in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region in north-eastern Italy, Slovenia and Ionian Island, where is known as Rebula and Robola respectively. Up to the early 1900s, Ribolla Gialla was widely cultivated throughout the Collio in the aforementioned region but often blended with other local varieties in the winemaking process. Nowadays, the area cultivated with Ribolla Gialla is increasing as well as its potential for the production of quality monovarietal sparkling wine.

The main research objectives of this project can be divided into two research lines – viticulture and enology. From the viticulture point of view: the aim of this part is to study how geographical location of vineyards (especially hills versus flat areas) affects the ripening of the grapes, and on the other hand, to determine which agronomic procedures can be used in the vineyard in order to obtain the best ratio between quality and quantity of the grapes. The second research line in this project relates to enological processes in the winery and studies different techniques with the aim to produce high-quality monovarietal Ribolla Gialla sparkling wine produced by Champenoise versus Charmat method.

The metabolomic approach will be applied, focusing on the characterization of volatile compounds, tryptophan derived metabolites and lipids at all stages of the sparkling wine production. For this purpose, analytical techniques such as one-dimensional or two-dimensional gas chromatography and liquid chromatography will be employed in this work.

Biography and contacts

Domen Škrab was born in 1991 in Postojna, Slovenia. In 2014 he obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Food Science and Nutrition at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he continued his Master’s studies in Food Science and graduated in 2017. In the same year, he started the doctoral course in the Ph.D. School “Agricultural Science and Biotechnology” at the University of Udine in collaboration with the Edmund Mach Foundation in San Michele all’Adige, Italy.

e-mail: skrab.domen@spes.uniud.it

phone: + 386 (0)31 496 320