Divergence in wine characteristics produced by wild and domesticated strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Abstract

The budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is the primary species used by wine makers to convert sugar into alcohol during wine fermentation. Saccharomyces cerevisiae is found in vineyards, but is also found in association with oak trees and other natural sources. Although wild strains of S. cerevisiae as well as other Saccharomyces species are also capable of wine fermentation, a genetically distinct group of S. cerevisiae strains is primarily used to produce wine, consistent with the idea that wine making strains have been domesticated for wine production. In this study, we demonstrate that humans can distinguish between wines produced using wine strains and wild strains of S. cerevisiae as well as its sibling species, Saccharomyces paradoxus. Wine strains produced wine with fruity and floral characteristics, whereas wild strains produced wine with earthy and sulfurous characteristics. The differences that we observe between wine and wild strains provides further evidence that wine strains have evolved phenotypes that are distinct from their wild ancestors and relevant to their use in wine production.

Fig. 1

Evolutionary relationship of strains used in this study. Distance tree (upgma) based on 4379 bp at five loci, using pairwise elimination of gaps and missing data. Distances (d) are the proportion of nucleotide differences* 1000. Average pairwise distances within groups are shown where applicable, distances between groups are indicated with arrows.

Fig. 2

Wine and non-wine strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae are differentiated for wine flavor and aroma attributes. Strain means (points) and standard error (ellipses) of the first two principal components for 12 wine attributes measured using quantitative descriptive analysis.

Fig. 3

Sensory attributes differentiate between wine and non-wine strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. (a) Class means for wine strains, wild strains, and Saccharomyces paradoxus strains, and (b) means for the palm, sake, and laboratory strains are shown for each of the six quantitative descriptive wine attributes that distinguish wine strains from other non-wine strains. Means were scaled from 0 (center) to 1 (spokes), where 0 represents the lowest mean score, and 1 represents the highest mean score for any class.