Wine grapes present a unique biogeography model, wherein microbial biodiversity patterns across viticultural zones not only answer questions of dispersal and community maintenance, they are also an inherent component of the quality, consumer acceptance, and economic appreciation of a culturally important food product. On their journey from the vineyard to the wine bottle, grapes are transformed to wine through microbial activity, with indisputable consequences for wine quality parameters. Wine grapes harbor a wide range of microbes originating from the surrounding environment, many of which are recognized for their role in grapevine health and wine quality. However, determinants of regional wine characteristics have not been identified, but are frequently assumed to stem from viticultural or geological factors alone. This study used a high-throughput, short-amplicon sequencing approach to demonstrate that regional, site-specific, and grape-variety factors shape the fungal and bacterial consortia inhabiting wine-grape surfaces. Furthermore, these microbial assemblages are correlated to specific climatic features, suggesting a link between vineyard environmental conditions and microbial inhabitation patterns. Taken together, these factors shape the unique microbial inputs to regional wine fermentations, posing the existence of nonrandom “microbial terroir” as a determining factor in regional variation among wine grapes.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/111/1/E139.full.pdf

Microbial biogeography of wine grapes is conditioned by cultivar, vintage, and climate

http://sgpwe.izt.uam.mx/files/users/uami/acym/articulo_1.pdf

Food fermentations: Microorganisms with technological beneficial use

The microbial ecology of wine grape berries.

Spoilage yeasts in the wine industry.

We present a method to directly characterize the yeast diversity present in wine fermentations by employing denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) of polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-amplified 26S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes. PCR-DGGE of a portion of the 26S rRNA gene was shown to distinguish most yeast genera associated with the production of wine. With this method the microbial dynamics in several model wine fermentations were profiled. PCR-DGGE provided a qualitative assessment of the yeast diversity in these fermentations accurately identifying populations as low as 1000 cells ml−1. PCR-DGGE represents an attractive alternative to traditional plating schemes for analysis of the microbial successions inherent in the fermentation of wine.

Direct profiling of the yeast dynamics in wine fermentations.

In this study, we identified a total of 33 wine yeast species and strains using the restriction patterns generated from the region spanning the internal transcribed spacers (ITS 1 and 2) and the 5.8S rRNA gene. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) products of this rDNA region showed a high length variation for the different species. The size of the PCR products and the restriction analyses with three restriction endonucleases (HinfI, CfoI, and HaeIII) yielded a specific restriction pattern for each species with the exception of the corresponding anamorph and teleomorph states, which presented identical patterns. This method was applied to analyze the diversity of wine yeast species during spontaneous wine fermentation.

Josepa Sabate

Papers

Rapid identification of wine yeast species based on RFLP analysis of the ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region

Isolation and identification of yeasts associated with vineyard and winery by RFLP analysis of ribosomal genes and mitochondrial DNA.