Yeasts found in vineyards and wineries

Abstract

Wine is a complex beverage, comprising thousands of metabolites that are produced through the action of a plethora of yeasts and bacteria during fermentation of grape must. These microbial communities originate in the vineyard and the winery and reflect the influence of several factors including grape variety, geographical location, climate, vineyard spraying, technological practices, processing stage and season (pre-harvest, harvest, post-harvest). Vineyard and winery microbial communities have the potential to participate during fermentation and influence wine flavour and aroma. Therefore, there is an enormous interest in isolating and characterising these communities, particularly non-Saccharomyces yeast species to increase wine flavour diversity, while also exploting regional signature microbial populations to enhance regionality. In this review we describe the role and relevance of the main non-Saccharomyces yeast species found in vineyards and wineries. This includes the latest reports covering the application of these species for winemaking; and the biotechnological characteristics and potential applications of non-Saccharomyces species in other areas. In particular, we focus attention on the species for which molecular and genomic tools and resources are available for study. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: non-Saccharomyces; wine; yeast.