"Good Wine Makes Good Blood": An Integrated Approach to Characterize Autochthonous Apulian Grapevines as Promising Candidates for Healthy Wines

Wine production represents an ancient human activity and one of the most economically important markets inEurope. Moreover, the health effects of grapes and related products have been largely demonstrated, andmostly depend on their richness in bioactive molecules such as flavonoid and non-flavonoid phenoliccompounds. Italy has the highest global wine production and provides one of the richest grapevine germplasmin the Mediterranean area. In this paper, our attention was focused on the evaluation of the total phenol andanthocyanin content in five autochthonous Apulian grapevine cultivars, in both wines and their non-alcoholicextracts. Moreover, the potential antioxidant effects of the non-alcoholic wine extracts on the cell viability ofCaco-2 and HeLa carcinoma cell lines were tested. Finally, for the most promising autochthonous selectedcultivars (Negramaro, Nero di Troia and Susumaniello), comparative transcriptomic analysis in berries wasperformed using high-throughput sequencing technology.