Chapter 6 Wine Fermentation

The molecular biology revolution has brought forth significant new advances with application in microbiological analysis during wine production and storage. For example, traditional methods for microbial strain identification have been mostly supplanted in favor of ribosomal RNA-based methods for speciation of cultured yeast and bacterial populations in wine. Moreover culture-independent molecular methods now allow for more rapid profiling of complex populations, or quantification of targeted species, thereby enhancing the information available to the winemaker. Finally, the availability of microbial genome sequences provides a wealth of new opportunities to understand and exploit the microorganisms in wine, as well as identify the key genetic factors underlying wine flavor development or depreciation. In general, advances in molecular biology are fundamentally changing how scientists and winemakers assess the microbial ecology of winemaking, providing new insight into the wonderfully complex conversion of grape juice to wine.