Results and Discussion
Wine quality and meteorological variables. In order to
analyze the relationships between wine quality and air
temperature (Table 2) and precipitation (Table 3), all possible
monthly and multimonthly combinations during the
January to October period were considered. Higher correlations
were found using the average values including the
last months of the season. A positive effect was observed
for air temperature, confirming that wines of high-quality
ranking were produced during warm years (Table 2). Moreover,
the highest correlation was obtained using the May
to October period (Figure 1A), which emphasizes the importance
of the thermal pattern throughout the entire
growing season. Rainfall was inversely correlated with
wine-quality ranking (Table 3). Statistical significance of
the rainfall was higher than for temperature (p < 0.01) in
many multimonth combinations. The highest correlations
were obtained using the last months of the season (-0.559
for September to October (Figure 1B) and -0.553 for September)
because of the importance of weather conditions
during harvest period when fungal infections and sugar
accumulation can be affected by intense precipitation