Yeast biodiversity from Vitis vinifera L., subsp. sylvestris (Gmelin) Hegi to face up the oenological consequences of climate change

¹ Department of Enological Research, Institute of Agrifood Research and Technology-Catalonian Institute of Vine and Wine (IRTA-INCAVI), Plaça Àgora 2, 08720 Vilafranca del Penedès, Barcelona, Spain
² Faculty of Biology, University of Sevilla. Avda. de la Reina Mercedes, s/n, 41012 Sevilla, Spain
³ Department of Agricultural Chemistry and Food Science, Autonomous University of Madrid, 28049 Madrid, Spain

Abstract

The impact of climate change in the viticulture is affecting the quality of grapes and their wines. As consequence, climatic variations are producing a mismatch between technological and phenolic maturity and are affecting the microbiota's ecology, biodiversity and their metabolism in vineyard, grape, must and wine. However, there are natural resources that can help to mitigate the effects of global warming. It has been noticed that grapes from female plants of wild vines (Vitis vinifera subsp. sylvestris) have very appropriate characteristics to face up this problem: later maturing, high acidity, high polyphenol content,…A molecular study of 819 strains isolated at the end of spontaneous fermentations of grapes of Vitis vinifera subsp. sylvestris grapevines from 30 locations in northern of Spain revealed 8 different genera and 18 different species. 71,5% of the yeasts were classified as non-Saccharomycesand 28,5% were identified as Saccharomyces cerevisiae. This latter specie was characterized at strain level, classifying 30 different groups, 6 of which as the majority from 2 up to 4 different locations. These findings demonstrate a wide diversity of yeast microbiota in wild grapes that will allow a yeast selection for the wine industry in a scenario of climate change.