Wine researchers share findings
Annual ASEV conference in Monterey spotlights recent progress in enology and viticulture
Moderator Linda Bisson of the University of California, Davis, (from left) leads presenters Tim Bucher, Veronique Cheynier and Susan Ebeler through Thursday's Innovation and Recent Developments Session.
Monterey, Calif.—For the first time since 1973, Monterey hosted the American Society for Enology and Viticulture’s annual conference, drawing an estimated 500 attendees June 20-24. With roughly 40,000 acres of winegrapes planted throughout Monterey County, the region is home to approximately 85 wineries and vineyards.
ASEV president Patty Saldivar told Wines & Vines, “We received lots of positive comments on both the program content as well as the venue.” An abundance of thought-provoking topics and rich content provoked some frustration: Sessions overlapped, making it difficult to decide which would be more valuable.
Dr. Linda Bisson of the University of California, Davis, moderated the Innovation and Recent Developments session, during which university scientists presented recent research and innovations within the wine industry.
Reformatting the industry
Session keynote speaker Tim Bucher of TastingRoom Inc., Santa Rosa, Calif. purchased his first vineyard at the age of 16. Combining his experience as senior vice president of Macintosh engineering for Apple with his wine and grapegrowing expertise, Bucher founded tastingroom.com. His goal was to capture a profitable component that can only be experienced in the physical tasting room—the “try and buy” aspect. Bucher’s operation decants 750ml bottles into 50ml sample bottles, a process he dubbed “reformatting”.
Mixed winery sampler packs are the most popular and represent 95% of sampler orders. Sampler packs contain six 50ml bottles priced between $19.99 and $34.99. If a customer then buys one or more of the wines, his fee is partially or sometimes totally refunded via a token or coupon.
To assure that the sample bottles are accurate replicas of the original bottlings, Bucher looked outside the wine industry to source technology. The reformatting process employs semiconductor clean room technology and pharmaceutical technology for gentle liquid movement. Bucher looked to the beer industry in vessel O2 monitoring.
“Quality control is paramount. Every single 750ml bottle that is opened in the process gets tested in an in-house lab,” Bucher explained. Wines are tested for TCA, complete oxidation and other taints and defects that the winemaker didn’t intend. The results are shared only with the winery. Bucher announced that this database will be used to launch an ambitious wine genome project.
“Innovating in the wine industry is not always easy. I want to be very up front about that,” Bucher said. Among the challenges to innovation, Bucher cited the difficulty of securing capital. “No one wants to invest in the wine industry at a large scale, other than those looking for hard assets such as winery, land and inventory.”
The future of phenolics
Polyphenol scientist Véronique Cheynier from France’s Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, gave an overview of recovering red wine polyphenols and pomace during a six-day maceration toward the end of fermentation.
Cheynier discovered that numerous anythocyanin-derived pigments can be produced, including deep turquoise colors. Color intensity increases with high O2 and decreases with low O2. “Continuous changes depended on time and O2,” she said.
The study was conducted through HPLC analysis coupled with spectrophotometry and mass spectrometry.
In addition to red wine polyphenols, Chardonnay proanthocyanidins were studied through analyses of oxidized tannins from small angle X-ray scattering experiments. Polyphenol fingerprinting was performed by mass spectrometry.
Cheynier reported progress in the determination of graph phenolic composition—the structure and color properties of some wine phenolics—as well as the structure of oxidized tannins.
“There are remaining gaps,” she acknowledged. “There is a need for new methods including high throughput methods. Relating the data to vine growing and winemaking conditions will improve wine quality,” she concluded.
Innovations in food safety
Dr. Susan Ebeler, co-director of the Food Safety and Measurement Facility, UC Davis, discussed the new, high-profile facility established eight months ago.
Studies at the facility will encompass secondary plant metabolites, microbial metabolites, flavor compounds, bioactive components, basic reactions and compositional changes during breeding, gene manipulation and pre- and post-harvest processing.
A goal of the new facility is becoming a hub to further the research efforts of scientists across the Davis campus. “The facility will also serve as a resource site for the training of scientists, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in the use of advanced instrumentation and its utilization for scientific advancement,” Ebeler said.
The proposed research aims to advance knowledge of relationships between volatiles and non-volatiles in foods and beverages, and will be conducted through GC-MS/MS analysis. Studies will include: identification and quantification of varieties, pesticide residues in wine, compounds in oak, heavy metal contamination in grapes and wine, geographic authentication and toxicity effects.
Green and clean
Dr. Roger Boulton, UC Davis, presented Potential for Green Cleaning Chemistries in Winemaking, defining sustainable chemistries and cleaning and sanitizing criteria. Disinfection kinetics time, concentration, pH and temperature are, he said, key components in defining sustainable sanitation protocol.
Boulton highlighted clean-in-place systems that can recapture, filter and re-use cleaning solutions to reduce wastewater and harmful soil interactions with spent cleaning materials.
He also explored microbial inactivation kinetics and the concept of using less chemistry to kill microbes by taking a longer processing time.
Boulton suggested using hydrogen peroxide or hot, low pH water heated to 60°C via passive solar energy as sustainable cleaning solutions. Both methods could result in elimination of chlorine compounds, sodium salts, phosphate and nitrates in wastewater.
The Monterey event was ASEV’s 62nd annual national conference. For more program details and surveys, visit asev.org. The 2012 meeting is scheduled for June 18-22, 2012, in Portland, Ore.