Many compounds associated to flavour and wine colour are known to be yeast strain-dependent. Because these metabolites are important for the sensory quality of wines, it is important to understand that winemaking is favoured by increased yeast diversity. This strategy is the ideal way to create unique wine profiles within a massive market.
The aim of this work is to study the oenological potential of 11 strains of Hanseniaspora vineae, native to Uruguay to better understand diversity within the species.
We have already obtained positive contributions at the winery level from this yeast species for strain T02_5F. The yeast strains were evaluated to determine the extracellular protease and β-glucosidase enzyme activities, the fermentative capacity at low nitrogen levels, glycerol production, polysaccharide release, SO2 resistance and the formation of aromatic compounds.
Fermentation products were evaluated to determine the sensory properties related to consumer preferences.
The results obtained enabled the verification of variability between strains of this species for some key attributes among the 11 strains, such as high protease and β-glucosidase enzymatic activity, and comparable to conventional wine yeasts of SO2 resistance.
The accumulation of some key aroma compounds was also consistent, including the low production of short chain fatty acids, ethyl esters and tyrosol, and the high production of acetate esters, sesquiterpenes and decanoic acid compared to Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains.
The most outstanding characteristic of the species H. vineae was the two orders of magnitude higher production of benzenoids and phenylpropanoid esters. The sensory evaluation performed on a model grape juice medium comparing with S. cerevisiae reflected this metabolic behaviour.
Article based on the poster presented at the at the 12th edition of Enoforum (Vicenza, Italy, May 21-23, 2019).