Application of high‐power ultrasounds during red wine vinification

Abstract

Wine colour is one of the main organoleptic characteristics influencing its quality. It is of special interest in red vinifications due to the economic resources that wineries have to invest for the extraction of the phenolic compounds responsible for wine colour, compounds that are mainly located inside the skin cell vacuoles, where the volatile compounds are also found. The transfer of phenolic compounds from grapes to must during vinification is closely related to the type of grapes and the winemaking technique. During traditional winemaking, grapes are crushed and skin macerated for several days, with pumps overs to facilitate the colour extraction. To increase this extraction, some chemical (maceration enzymes) or physical technologies (thermovinification, cryomaceration, flash-expansion) can be applied. In this work, a new methodology has been tested. This methodology consists in the application of high-power ultrasounds to crushed grapes to increase the extraction of phenolic compounds. Crushed grapes were treated with this non-thermal technology and vinified, with 3, 6 and 8 days of skin maceration time, and the results were compared with a control vinification, where crushed grapes were not subjected to any treatment and were skin macerated during 8 days. The wine chromatic characteristics (determined spectrophotometrically) and the individual phenolic compounds (anthocyanins and tannins, determined by HPLC) were followed during the maceration period, at the end of alcoholic fermentation and after two months in bottle. Also, the wine volatile compounds were determined by GC-MS. The wines made with ultrasound-treated grapes showed differences with the control wine, especially regarding total phenol content and tannin content. The wines elaborated with sonicated grapes and with only three days of skin maceration time presented similar concentration of anthocyanins and twice the concentration of tannins than control wines elaborated with 8 days of skin maceration.

Non‐thermal technologies and its current and future application in the food industry: a review

“…In addition, Bautista‐Ortín et al . () attempted to apply high‐power ultrasound technology to red wine vinification, which indicated that ultrasonic technology has the potential to be applied to the brewing of fruit wine because it can reduce the brewing cycle and output cost (Bautista‐Ortín et al ., ).…”

High power ultrasounds: A powerful, non-thermal and green technique for improving the phenolic extraction from grapes to must during red wine vinification

“…It is clear that the use of ultrasound attracts a lot of interest in the enological field, however [2] did a literature review where it can be seen that almost all the previous studies have been done with laboratory equipment. We could only find two studies where a medium-scale system, suitable for working in small wineries, were used [11,12]. Our previous studies [11] reported that the wines made with ultrasound-treated grapes showed differences with the control wine, especially regarding total phenol content and tannin content.…”

Emerging Technologies to Increase Extraction, Control Microorganisms, and Reduce SO2

“…The emerging technologies that showed the greatest potential for increasing the extraction of skin compounds and controlling indigenous microorganisms are as follows: high hydrostatic pressure (HHP) [4][5][6], ultra high pressure homogenization (UHPH) [7][8][9], pulsed electric fields (PEFs) [10][11][12][13][14][15], electron-beam irradiation (eBeam) [16][17][18], ultrasound (US) [15,[19][20], and pulsed light (PL) [21][22][23]. Most of these technologies are either approved or under evaluation as new enological practices in the International Organization of Vine and Wine (OIV) regulations [24][25][26].…”