The recent news that, "grapes and the wines they produce are also the product of an unseen but fairly predictable microbial terroir" may not come as much of a surprise to anyone studying soil and vine microbiota, but all the same "Microbial biogeography of wine grapes is conditioned by cultivar, vintage, and climate" (PNAS November 25, 2013) should stand as a fairly significant piece of research.
In the long run, the potential ability to distinguish the source region of a must is likely to prove the most notable result of this research. However, it should be noted that the experiment was conducted on newly crushed and inoculated must and not on finished wine. As such the main potential benefit would be for wineries looking to verify the provenance of grapes that they are receiving and not to verify the regional authenticity of any finished wine.
UCD Press Release link: news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=10762
Original article at PNAS Early Edition (PDF): pnas.org/content/early/2013/11/20/1317377110.full.pdf