Wine fermentation microbiome: a landscape from different Portuguese wine appellations

• Main Authors: Cátia ePinto, Diogo ePinho, Remy eCardoso, Valéria eCustódio, Joana eFernandes, Susana eSousa, Miguel ePinheiro, Conceição eEgas, Ana Catarina Gomes
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2015-09-01
• Series: Frontiers in Microbiology
• Subjects: microbial communities; Grape Microbiology; wine spontaneous fermentation microbiome; industrial metagenomics; wine appellations
• Online Access: http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fmicb.2015.00905/full

Grapes and wine musts harbour a complex microbiome, which plays a crucial role in wine fermentation as it impacts on wine flavour and, consequently, on its final quality and value. Unveiling the microbiome and its dynamics, and understanding the ecological factors that explain such biodiversity, has been a challenge to oenology. In this work, we tackle this using a metagenomics approach to describe the natural microbial communities, both fungal and bacterial microorganisms, associated with spontaneous wine fermentations. For this, the wine microbiome, from six Portuguese wine appellations, was fully characterized as regards to three stages of fermentation – Initial Must (IM), and Start and End of alcoholic fermentation (SF and EF, respectively).The wine fermentation process revealed a higher impact on fungal populations when compared with bacterial communities, and the fermentation evolution clearly caused a loss of the environmental microorganisms. Furthermore, significant differences (p<0.05) were found in the fungal populations between IM, SF and EF, and in the bacterial population between MI and SF. Fungal communities were characterized by either the presence of environmental microorganisms and phytopathogens in the initial musts, or yeasts associated with alcoholic fermentations in wine must samples as Saccharomyces and non-Saccharomyces yeasts (as Lachancea, Metschnikowia, Hanseniaspora, Hyphopichia, Sporothrix, Candida and Schizosaccharomyces). Among bacterial communities, the most abundant family was Enterobacteriaceae; though families of species associated with the production of lactic acid (Lactobacillaceae, Leuconostocaceae) and acetic acid (Acetobacteriaceae) were also detected. Interestingly, a biogeographical correlation for both fungal and bacterial communities was identified between wine appellations at IM suggesting that each wine region contains specific and embedded microbial communities which may contribute to the uniqueness of regional wines.