AREA III. Maturation and enology
Project 11:

Characteristics and requirements of commercial yeasts and their impact on the sensorial attributes of wines

Actually there is a broad supply of industrial yeast stocks available for wine fermentation.  Due to the absence of independent evaluations of the requirements and fermenting capacity of these stocks, enologists often lack the necessary information to choose the best ones, according to the conditions of the must that is to be fermented and the desired product.  In this project, after characterizing the most-commonly used industrial yeast stocks in the wine industry, a search engine shall be set up to enable enologists to classify commercial yeast stocks according to objective criteria, such as must composition, fermenting conditions and end product.

A second study within this project is related to the current trend of harvesting over mature grapes.  Such grapes produce wines with a high degree of alcohol, which later require costly alcohol removal processes which, in turn, may affect the quality of the resulting wine.  This project intends to minimize these effects working on two different fronts.  On the one hand, the development of a yeast stock which has a lower performance in ethanol but does not affect final wine quality shall be evaluated. On the other hand, the different variables involved in the viniculture process which allow the control of ethanol biosynthesis shall also be evaluated. 

Project Length: 3 years