Contribution of the Microbiome as a Tool for Estimating Wine’s Fermentation Output and Authentication

Abstract

Wine is the alcoholic beverage which is the product of alcoholic fermentation, usually, of fresh grape must. Grape microbiome is the source of a vastly diverse pool of filamentous fungi, yeast, and bacteria, the combination of which plays a crucial role for the quality of the final product of any grape must fermentation. In recent times, the significance of this pool of microorganisms has been acknowledged by several studies analyzing the microbial ecology of grape berries of different geographical origins, cultural practices, grape varieties, and climatic conditions. Furthermore, the microbial evolution of must during fermentation process has been overstudied. The combination of the microbial evolution along with metabolic and sensorial characterizations of the produced wines could lead to the suggestion of the microbial terroir. These aspects are today leading to open a new horizon for products such as wines, especially in the case of PDO-PGI products. The aims of this review is to describe (a) how the microbiome communities are dynamically differentiated during the process of fermentation from grape to ready-to-drink wine, in order to finalize each wine's unique sensorial characteristics, and (b) whether the microbiome could be used as a fingerprinting tool for geographical indication, based on high-throughput sequencing (HTS) technologies. Nowadays, it has been strongly indicated that microbiome analysis of grapes and fermenting musts using next-generation sequencing (NGS) could open a new horizon for wine, in the case of protected designation of origin (PDO) and protected geographical indication (PGI) determination.

Yeast and bacterial inoculation practices influence the microbial communities of barrel‐fermented Chardonnay wines

“…Methylobacterium spp. are ubiquitous in water and soil, and are commonly identified in wine and grape samples (Bokulich et al 2012, 2013, Ghosh et al 2015, Zarraonaindia et al 2015, Anagnostopoulos et al 2019). Methylobacterium spp., however, have also been identified as common contaminants in DNA extraction kits (Salter et al 2014), so its presence in wine is up for debate.…”

Cyprus Sausages’ Bacterial Community Identification Through Metataxonomic Sequencing: Evaluation of the Impact of Different DNA Extraction Protocols on the Sausages’ Microbial Diversity Representation

“…Emerging evidence suggests that the microbial diversity of fermented products is differentiated based on the processing conditions and the area of production (Bokulich et al, 2016;Anagnostopoulos et al, 2019;Kamilari et al, 2019;Kamimura et al, 2019;van Reckem et al, 2020). In the present study, HTS was applied for a first in-depth quantitative characterization of Cyprus sausages' bacterial diversity, mapping the variation in the bacterial consortia of traditional Pitsilia sausages compared to industrial ones.…”

Metataxonomic Analysis of Grape Microbiota During Wine Fermentation Reveals the Distinction of Cyprus Regional terroirs

“…The exclusive sensorial characteristics of wines are influenced by the contribution of regional environmental factors, including topography, climatic conditions, soil, different varieties, and microbial patterns, generally known as “ terroir ” ( Bokulich et al, 2013 ; Anagnostopoulos et al, 2019 ). Differences in topoclimate, soil, and vines distinguish a plethora of terroirs in Cyprus, providing a specific character in different terroir’ produced wines ( Kokkinofta et al, 2017 ).…”