Stabilisation, process development and optimisation
We are currently targeting two main areas for improvement in the post-fermentation phase of winemaking: protein stabilisation and packaging. Protein haze remains one of the key potential instabilities in white wine production that requires costly treatment with losses in overall quality. Most of these costs are associated with the quality downgrading of wine recovered from the bentonite lees. The first suite of projects in this stream addresses the need to develop alternatives to bentonite fining by discovering novel proteolytic enzymes, developing new heat treatment regimes and through a thorough understanding of the phenomenon of haze formation.
In addition to protein haze formation after bottling, wines can also be placed at risk of oxidative spoilage and premature development through packaging, transport and storage decisions. At present, Australian wine producers have little in the way of tools to predict shelf life because the factors likely to impact on it are poorly understood. In particular, producers lack information about the factors with the greatest influence on oxygen ingress rate and cannot accurately quantify the amount of oxygen likely to be introduced into bottles during packaging and wine transfer operations. The second suite of projects in this research stream aims to collect the data required to assess the relative importance of winemaking practices, packaging choices and transport and storage conditions on oxygen ingress into wines and to link this to wine development in bottles and oxidative spoilage. This information would then be used to develop models to allow predictions of shelf life to be made at various stage of a bottled wine’s life.