Miss Natalia Caliani

The growing interest for more interesting and innovating wine has led us to investigate wild yeast populations found on grape surfaces. These species known as non-Saccharomyces, seem very promising as they can contribute to improve aromas and global perception of wine. However there are still many things we do not know about these species and this project aims to investigate how they might be used to benefit the wine industry. We’d like to understand how sensitive they are to ethanol and SO₂ because that is going to tell us how likely they are to survive during alcohol fermentation, and from that point deduce fermentation techniques as successive inoculations or co-inoculations to obtain better results while exploiting their potential. Their sensitivity to fungicides is also important, especially to help growers better choose the products that have the lesser effects on them, and thus improve ferments diversity and health. Nitrogen nutrition is a key aspect of fermentation kinetics, so understanding non-Saccharomyces needs will contribute in establishing supplementation schemes in order to maximise their secondary metabolites production and resilience. Communities’ evolution will be evaluated during different seasons to understand what type of relationships occur between communities, and how of them thrive and establish while other disappear.