Application of Vine-Shoot Chips during Winemaking and Aging of Malbec and Bonarda Wines

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an interesting work that reports the effect of the addition of vine-shoot chips in Argentinian wines (Malbec and Bonarda). Authors studied the enological parameters, color and phenolic composition in two different experiments (at winemaking and aging period of 4 months). Results are well exposed and explained and conclusions are according to the obtained results.

However, I would like to know how authors established the dose (12 g/L) of chips to apply. This could be explained in the manuscript. I suppose that is a dose close to the oak chips doses applied in enology.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

When it's possible, can the author create a design table for Section 2.2.1 it is rather confusing on what has been done.

Looks like there are two experiments/studies, would be better to subsection it accordingly to Study 1 and Study 2 and include only the methods that appears in each study accordingly.

How many participants for sensory? Were they trained? Were there any ethics approval for this paper?

p-values, also supplement the F values for the test; there is no need to be very specific with 5dp, 3dp is sufficient.

abcs from posthoc Tukey's information needs to be added in Table/Figure captions

Figure 2. It seems that there are two factors here? Isn't it then better to run 2 way ANOVA? Or is there a reason why not?

Figure 3. for the significance ones - is it within time period? If yes, clarify on caption.

When there are significant interactions an interaction plot should be plotted and assessed to see the relationship of the interaction itself. 

Figure 6-7. I'm unsure whether it is suitable to separate the flash profiling results into 3 sections within months, it should be merged and the results interpreted as a whole.

 

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

The work titled "Application of vine-shoot chips during winemaking and aging of Malbec and Bonarda wines " by Fanzone et al. investigate the use of vine-shoots as enological additives in the two more emblematic Vitis vinitifera L. cultivars from Mendoza (Malbec and Bonarda), applied at two different moments of winemaking. In general, the work fits well the aims and scope of Beverages Journal, but revision is necessary to be published. I enclose some suggestions that I recommend to the authors, keep in mind to improve the paper. Please see below my main suggestions.

 

Manuscript and generals’ aspects

Throughout the text, first-person mentions should be avoided (lines 134, 185, 190, 241, 263, 292, 373, 386, 390 and 452.

Introduction

Line 58.  Maybe, authors would like to say “trans-resveratrol”.

Materials and methods

Line 75. Authors indicate that vine-shoots from Bonarda cultivar were used, why weren't vine-shoots of the Malbec variety also used? Why only Bonarda chips? Did the authors do any previous studies for the selection of this variety?

Line 93. Why was the design completely randomized?

Line 107. Changed by “Application of Vine-Shoots During Wine Aging”, since, in both cases (during winemaking and during aging) vine-shoots are considered as additives.

Line 107. The wines used for experiment B, had they undergone malolactic fermentation? This information. This information must be included in any case.

Line 117. Throughout the text, authors use chips. Change fragments by chips.

Line 118. As for section 2.2.1. indicate the total number of wines that were obtained.

Line 127. Indicate cell type and size and the wavelength for the measurements.  

Line 143. Although authors explain the differences with the sums, they must include the list of the individual compounds that are later mentioned in lines 285-288.

Line 162. Indicate more information related to the taster panel (gender, age, etc) and related to the tasting room.

Line 162. Why did the authors used this type of sensory test? It is true that it can have the advantage of collecting a large number of descriptors for the definition of the main attributes and generating fast descriptive results on the main sensory differences between products. However, this leads to a lower degree of precision especially when the attribute space is complex, as is the case of wine.

Lines 162-172. Authors should include the reference that mentions "Flash Profile Method"

Line 163. Why was there no tasting for the wines of Experiment A? The results obtained could be so interesting.

Results and Discussion

Since the content of sections 3.1. and 3.2. is based on the discussion of the same parameters, the authors should homogenize the title of the sections 3.1.1. and 3.2.1; 3.1.2. and 3.2.2; and 3.1.3. and 3.2.3.

Lines 184-186. This information can be deleted since it is repeated in objective and materials and methods sections. So, it is not necessary to reposition the reader.

Lines 188-195. As in the previous case, this information could be eliminated or included at the end of the section, as a summary. But in reality, this information is the conclusions.

Line 203. Can the authors explain why the increase in alcohol content?

Line 206. Do the authors mean that the microorganisms are present in the vine-shoots? Maybe in the case of no toasted vine-shoots, but no in the case of toasted ones, since the temperatures that are reached are very high.

Lines 209-211. If due to this fact, the behavior in both varieties should have been similar ...

Line 219. Why do the authors indicate that the surface contact was different if the size of the chips was the same?

Line 303. Change by “Experiment B. Application of Vine-Shoots During Wine Aging”

Lines 304-311. More of this information, is repeated (lines 304-305), so it could be eliminated, or it could include at the end of the section, as a summary or in the conclusions section (lines 308-311).  

Line 314. Why did authors not work with the wine after carrying out the malolactic fermentation?

Line 329. Authors must explain this fact.

Line 368. Change “fragments” by “chips”.

Line 395. Although it was significant for both factors, but it should be noted that the p values for the time factor were higher for some of the parameters.

Line 403. Correct “vine-shoots”.

Line 437. In this case, it would be interesting to include a Supplementary Table where the individual evolution of each compound analyzed is included.

Line 448. Change “ageing” by “aging”.

Line 477. Did authors do a joint analysis to be able to make this statement? If not, it should delete this statement.

Lines 508-510. The authors cannot make this statement, since they have not studied the volatile composition of the wines, and in the paper they indicate, only a volatile characterization of extracts of vine-shoots and oak chips is carried out. Please, delete.

Figures and Tables

For the titles of the Figures/Tables whose content is the same, the authors must homogenize (for example, Table 1 and Tables 2 and 3)

Table 1. In the footnote to the table, there is a mistake, please rewrite “(Tukey HSD test, p <0.05). Significant p-values…”

Figures 2, 3 and 4. Even if there are no statistically significant differences, the result should be included for all parameters.

Figures, S2 and S3. If the authors guide does not say otherwise, these figures should be included in the manuscript.

Figure 6 and 7. The information provided by the Circle plots of MFA is interesting, but as it includes a large number of variables, interpretation is difficult. Authors should include a Table (maybe in Supplementary Material) that includes the weight of those attributes that contributed the most to the separation.

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I'd like to thank the authors for their response.

It is more useful to present F values as to p values to indicate extremity of a factor in an ANOVA model. So include that if that is the intention of the authors.

Interaction Figures needs to be included in the manuscript and further discussed.

Re MFA projections, I understand that this would be interesting for an industry POV to separate it but this isn't statistically correct. What I can recommend is still to have them merged but filter the appropriate samples for interpretation.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have taken into account most of the proposed indications. However, I believe that some should be reviewed again and I invite the authors to do so: a) indicate in materials and methods that the wines underwent malolactic fermentation, even though it is indicated in the corresponding section; b) if the authors did previous works but they are not published and have served as the basis for this study, they should indicate in some way to justify said choice; c) the reference that was indicated to be included for "Flash Profile Method" is in which the method is described, not an application of it.

Author Response

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