Wine Yeasts Strain Idenification

Abstract

Commercially produced strains of wine yeast are being widely accepted in the wine industry, and many new strains are finding their way into the market. However, most of the strains belong to the Saccharomyces cerevisiae group and cannot be readily distinguished and identified by classical biochemical methods. We have, therefore, developed a series of tests to identify and characterize yeast strains including rapid biochemical methods, killer profile, protein electrophoresis profile, volatile fatty acids profile, chromosome electrophoresis, and DNA fingerprinting. We applied these techniques to several commercially available wine yeast strains (Prise de Mousse) used for the production of sparkling wines and found them to be different. Therefore, they have the potential to impart different characters to wines.