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Commercial Saccharomyces cerevisae yeasts are still the cornerstone of wine-making. However, use of indigenous S. cerevisae strains or spontaneous fermentations are gaining grounds. Still, we have limited understanding of the effects of S. cerevisiae strains on the composition and succession of vinification microbiota and its cascading effects on wine characteristics. We hypothesized that commercial or indigenous S. cerevisiae strains would lead to different vinification microbiota, volatiles, physicochemical and sensory attributes of wines. To verify this we employed vinifications inoculated with indigenous (W12, W13, W17) or commercial S. cerevisiae (GVS107, SH12) and one spontaneous (S). Amplicon sequencing and (GTG)5 analysis showed that fungal inocula dominated the inoculated vinifications, whereas the spontaneous supported a diverse community of Saccharomyces and non-Saccharomyces (NS) yeasts. The bacterial community didn't vary between vinifications, dominated by acetic acid bacteria (AAB), Burkholderia, Asinibacterium and Sphingomonas. The spontaneous fermentation showed a distinct volatilome compared to inoculated fermentations which didn't differ. The distinct fungal microbiota and volatiles in spontaneous vinification were reflected in the distinct oenological and sensory characteristics (nuts, herbaceous) of the wine compared to inoculated vinifications (fruits, blossoms). Saccharomyces were the key mediators of the volatilome in the inoculated fermentations, compared to spontaneous, where NS yeasts moderated volatiles.
Bekris et al. (Wed,) studied this question.