Wine is considered by many to be one of the best alcoholic beverages in the world. They have been reported to have multiple health benefits and even people claim it to be the reason behind a long life. Wine is also a staple drink on many households in countries in Europe. Now, researchers found a very odd revelation as to why wines, such as Chablis and Chardonnay, have a distinct aroma and taste to them.
A small single-celled, brainless organism, named Saccharomyces cerevisiae provides a tiny but important contribution when it comes to the taste and flavor of wine. Wine making has many factors that are greatly considered, everything from the soil, topography, climate, and agricultural process used in the production of Bordeaux. The concept behind wine making is called "terroir."
"I was surprised that we detected any signal at all from these geographically different yeast populations in the aroma profile of the wine -- I thought we would not," Matthew Goddard of the University of Lincoln in England and also co-author of the study said. Wines geographic differences were long believed to be caused by plant genetics, soil and climate, and the farming method used but now, with the new study, yeast plays a major role as well. The idea of having small single-celled microbes as part of "terroir" is new, Goddard added.
Goddard and his team compared the genetic difference between populations of S. cerevisiae found in sauvignon blanc grapes, which were produced by six major wine makers in New Zealand to confirm that in fact the yeast plays an important role in wine making. The results came back confirming that yeast does help in wine making. Almost half of the chemical compounds that distinguish a wine's unique characteristic came from yeast during fermentation. Further studies are to be done by the researchers whether yeast affects regional wine characteristics.
