Ecology and Evolutionary Biology as Frameworks to Study Wine Fermentations

Abstract

Winemaking has leveraged microbiology to enhance wine quality, typically by engineering and inoculating individual yeast strains with desirable traits. However, yeast strains do not grow alone during wine fermentation, rather they are embedded in diverse and evolving microbial communities exhibiting complex ecological dynamics. Understanding and predicting the interplay between the yeast community over the course of the species succession and the chemical matrix of wine can benefit from recognising that wine, like all microbial ecosystems, is subject to general ecological and evolutionary rules. In this piece, we outline how conceptual and methodological frameworks from community ecology and evolutionary biology can assist wine yeast researchers in improving wine fermentation processes by understanding the mechanisms governing population dynamics, predicting and engineering these important microcosms, and unlocking the genetic potential for wine strain development.

Keywords: food biotechnology; functional diversity; microbe:microbe interactions; microbial communities; microbial diversity.

FIGURE 1

Understanding the wine fermentation from an ecological perspective can provide insights about the biological dynamic within it and how these can be manipulated to achieve desired fermentation outcomes. Four main ecological and evolutionary processes drive population dynamics within a single wine fermentation, each holding varying levels of importance at different stages. Initially, environmental filtering—shaped by the abiotic characteristics of wine fermentation (such as high osmolarity and low pH)—dominates. Following this, interspecific interactions become the dominant ecological process governing community dynamics. At this point, as ecological complexity increases, so do the opportunities for ecosystem transformation through natural processes like niche construction and artificial oenological interventions, such as environmental modification (e.g., sulphite addition or nutrient supplementation) and yeast species inoculation. These ecological processes culminate in the establishment of a moderately diverse community of fermenting yeasts, led by the dominance of S. cerevisiae strain populations, in a process that mirrors some key aspects of ecological invasions. Even as this keystone species comes to dominate the community different strains will continue to compete with and displace one another as the S. cerevisiae population adapts to the wine environment via selection on genetic variation.

FIGURE 2

Some non‐Saccharomyces species exhibit a better performance than S. cerevisiae using specific nutrients (carbon sources in blue and nitrogen sources in green) found in grape must and under specific conditions within the wine fermentation ecosystem. Here, we show data of the growth rate of 60 strains, belonging to 30 different species assayed in a set of growth conditions, compared with that of S. cerevisiae. Each dot corresponds to an individual value and the colour scale represents how better (in red) or worse (in blue) a strain grow compared with S. cerevisiae . Data adapted from Ruiz et al. (2023).