Australia is rightly seen as a technologically advanced producer of wines with good quality/price ratios and integrity, and the AWRI has been instrumental in enabling the grape and wine sector to develop and maintain that status by providing world-class and relevant science. Equally importantly, the AWRI has actively supported adoption and application of new technologies. In an increasingly competitive global environment, innovation in winemaking technology throughout the grape-to-wine production chain will, without doubt, facilitate continued market success for the Australian wine sector.
Innovative winemaking practices are required to maintain wine quality while using grapes grown under continually changing and, at times, extremely challenging climatic conditions. Innovation will support positive outcomes for producers and consumers of Australian wines economically, environmentally and within a social context.
The key goals of research in the area of grape and wine production are to establish innovative, profitable, sustainable and flexible production techniques that allow producers to meet planned style and wine quality specification; to accelerate the speed with which producers can respond to changing consumer preferences, market opportunities and requirements; and to safeguard the Australian wine sector and further strengthen its ability to meet the high quality, integrity and authenticity standards required to gain and maintain access to international markets.
Research topics:
- Stabilisation, process development and optimisation
- Yeast, bacteria and fermentation
- Using yeast to modulate wine flavour
- Generating wine yeasts that produce reduced levels of ethanol
- Non-conventional wine yeasts: interspecific yeast hybrids
- Malolactic fermentation
- Optimising fermentation performance and wine quality through nutrient management
- Constructing a wine yeast gene deletion library
- AWRI Wine Microorganism Culture Collection
- Wine yeast genomics: outlining the genetic blueprint of wine yeast
- Metabolomics: unravelling biochemical complexity