## 1 Introduction  
Different crop and canopy management practices that alter crop size, source to sink ratio or fruit zone microclimate are used in viticulture production in order to achieve a targeted yield and composition of berries at harvest [1; 2; 3; 4; 5]. Some practices are used to regulate crop size, such as bud load management [6], shoot thinning [7; 8] or cluster thinning [9; 10]. They aim to achieve a lower yield and a greater leaf area to fruit ratio and, consequently, promote sugar accumulation in berries by increasing the assimilate availability per unit of grape mass [5; 11]. For the production of premium quality, full-bodied red wines, cluster thinning at the beginning of veraison is a practice often used by winegrowers, especially if the yield in the current season is expected to be overly high for a targeted wine style [12]. The vine usually reacts to this practice with enhanced ripening dynamics, resulting in increasedsugar concentration, pH, lower tittatable acidity and, in most cases, increased concentration of anthocyanins and other phenolic compounds in grapes and their respective wines [13; 14]. However, the practices of yield reduction are nowadays questioned due to the effects of climate changes; the earlier and more enhanced ripening of grapes, with higher sugar accumulation in berries, is a trend largely observed in recent decades in most wine growing regions worldwide [15; 16; 17; 18; 19]. This situation, in many cases, leads to excessively high alcohol concentration in wine, negatively affecting its sensory quality and leading to wines which are out of balance in term of the alcoholic notes or hotness sensation [20; 21]. Furthermore, the desired sugar concentration for the production of red wines is often reached without a proper phenolic maturity in terms of the accumulation of secondary metabolites in berries [15; 22; 23], forcing the producers to harvest the grapes at supra-optimal sugar concentrations owing to the contribution of phenolic compounds to the formation of specific sensory characteristics of wine, such as color, aroma, mouth-feel and flavor [24]. In order to mitigate these rising challenges to viticulture production, several measures to delay ripening dynamics have been widely studied in recent years, such as the use of late ripening rootstocks, varieties or clones, delayed pruning, reduced leaf area to fruit ratio, late source limitation, anti-transpirants and shading nets, late irrigation or other methods [16; 18; 23; 25; 26; 27]. Among these options, late source limitation is focused on the removal of the leaves in the apical part of the canopy around veraison as, at this stage, the apical leaves are the most functional, having reached full expansion while still short of senescence [28]. Late source limitation may be carried out as leaf removal in the apical part of the canopy [29; 30] or severe shoot trimming [31; 32; 33]. Several studies obtained promising results with this technique as the sugar content was reduced without negatively affecting the concentration of anthocyanins in the berries [28; 34; 35; 36]. However, despite the widely investigated impact of late source limitation on berry composition, only few studies have considered the effect of these techniques on wine sensory characteristics and its overall quality, leading to a knowledge gap in this regard. [PERSON] et al. [22] showed that moderate post-veraison defoliation and trimming decreased soluble solids in berry and wine alcohol concentration and improved wine sensory score in Aglianico variety, whereas intense defoliation and trimming negatively affected this parameter. In other studies with severe shoot trimming a mild modification of wine sensory characteristics was obtained with this practice as the reduction in red fruit aroma attributes and color intensity [37] or the increase in the total wine score [33].