Nicola Biasi unveiled a tool to predict how wines will age in warmer climates

Italian wine consultant Nicola Biasi has introduced a new method meant to help wineries measure and manage how a wine is likely to change over time, as producers face warmer growing conditions and faster ripening that can shorten a wine’s useful life.

The system, called Nb-Wep, short for Wine Evolution Potential, was presented on Thursday, November 5 by Nicola Biasi Consulting as a technical tool to assess, monitor and guide a wine’s aging path from cellar to bottling. The aim is not only to describe how a wine tastes at a given moment, but also to estimate where it is heading and use that information to make practical decisions in the winery.

Biasi, an enologist and wine producer, said the method grew out of a problem that has become more pressing for producers in recent years. Hotter conditions and earlier harvests can lead to grapes with higher sugar levels and more advanced ripeness, while also creating weaker acid balance and less stable phenolic compounds. Those changes can affect a wine’s freshness, aromatic profile and overall balance as it ages.

“Not all wines are made to evolve for 30 years without losing integrity, but it is our job to bring them to their maximum potential,” Biasi said in comments reported by WineNews, an Italian wine publication.

The method is built around four elements: pH, total acidity, phenols, including oxidizable phenols and their relationship to total phenols, and sensory tasting. According to Biasi Consulting, those factors are combined through a proprietary algorithm that produces a single technical indicator, the Nb-Wep index.

The company said the index is designed to give winemakers a clearer reading of a wine’s evolutionary sensitivity. In practice, it is meant to help them decide how long to age a wine, what vessels to use, how much oxygen exposure to allow and how much protection the wine may need before bottling.

Biasi said climate trends are moving against what much of the market wants. Consumers, he said, are looking for wines that are fresher, lighter and lower in alcohol, while warmer conditions are often delivering riper grapes and wines that are more structured, more alcoholic and less fresh.

“The climate is moving in exactly the opposite direction from what the market is asking for,” Biasi told WineNews. He said the answer cannot simply be to harvest earlier, because fruit picked before it is fully ripe may not give satisfactory winemaking results. Instead, he said, producers need to manage aging and preparation in a way that helps each wine express the best version of its own aging capacity, rather than trying to make every bottle last for decades.

Under the protocol described by the consultancy, the same wine is checked several times during the year until bottling. Each stage follows the same sequence: sampling, laboratory analysis, calculation of the Nb-Wep score, comparison with earlier data and then a technical recommendation. The company said the purpose of measurement is not to reduce wine to a number or replace tasting, but to support decisions with more consistent data.

That point is central to how the method is being presented. Biasi Consulting said tasting remains essential and that the index is meant to work alongside sensory evaluation, not in place of it. The system is intended to help producers follow the same wine over time and create a historical record for each wine and each production area.

The broader industry context is one of growing concern over how climate change is altering wine style and stability. In many regions, higher temperatures can speed up sugar accumulation in grapes, pushing up potential alcohol levels before acidity and phenolic maturity are in ideal balance. Winemakers then face a narrower window to pick fruit and a more difficult task in preserving freshness and drinkability.

Biasi said monitoring phenols, especially those that are most prone to oxidation, can give wineries more control over how a wine will develop. He said that by adjusting aging choices on the basis of those readings, producers may be able to preserve freshness while making better use of each wine’s natural potential.

Nicola Biasi is also the founder of Resistenti Nicola Biasi, a network of eight wineries focused on Piwi grape varieties, which are bred for higher disease resistance. His consultancy said the new index is part of a wider effort to give producers more technical tools as vineyard and cellar conditions become less predictable.

The company said the final goal is to protect freshness, identity, drinkability and the ability to evolve over time, while giving wineries a more structured way to respond to a fast-changing production environment.