“…We found that the capacity to degrade tartaric acid, and other related aldaric acids, occurs mainly in yeasts of basidiomycetous affinity and very rarely among ascomycetous yeasts (Fonseca, 1992(Fonseca, , 1995. The only ascomycetous species that showed the ability to assimilate tartaric acid were Candida bertae, Candida paludigena and Stephanoascus smithiae, which appear to be closely related based on phenotypic (Fonseca, 1992 ;Gime! nez-Jurado et al, 1994) and genotypic (Kurtzman & Robnett, 1995, 1997, 1998 selective media with (j)-tartaric acid (Fonseca, 1992), we isolated a strain of ascomycetous affinity from dried wine lees, which could not be identified as any previously described species according to morphological and physiological characteristics (Barnett et al, 1990 ;Kurtzman & Fell, 1998 …”