Abstract
The effects of wine yeasts and malolactic bacteria on the anthocyanin profile of Sangiovese wines as produced by both commercial-scale winemaking processes and laboratory experiments were investigated. The mean anthocyanin profile of the wines obtained from commercial winemaking processes, carried out in several wineries in Tuscany, showed a distinctive anthocyanin pattern, characterized by high percentages of malvidin-3-glucoside, without appreciable levels of acylated anthocyanins. This anthocyanin pattern, also shared by all the wines produced in laboratory by experimental vinifications, reproduces the peculiar profile of Sangiovese grapes and makes quite distinguishable Sangiovese wines from Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon wines. The principal component analysis of all the anthocyanin data showed that the Sangiovese wines didn’t group on the basis of wine producing area or harvest year of the grapes or winery, but they distributed along a longitudinal axis, owning to the variability of cyanidin-3-glucoside, peonidin-3-glucoside and malvidin-3-glucoside percentages. This variability was independent of the yeast ecology of fermentation, at least if yeast ecology was described at level of yeast species. In both commercial and experimental wines, higher percentages of vitisin A, a malvidine-3-glucoside derivative, were dependent on the growth and dominance of C. zemplinina in the early stages of vinification. The anthocyanin profile of the Sangiovese wines was maintained also after malolactic fermentation.
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