The Australian Wine Research Institute

The ambit of wine biosciences research at the AWRI is the improvement of microbial performance, wine diversity and wine quality. Research in this broad arena encompasses studies on physiology, genetics, molecular biology, biochemistry and systems biology of wine yeast and bacteria. The aims of the Wine Biosciences team include: identifying and generating novel yeasts with improved winemaking and sensory-imparting properties; improving fermentation outcomes by developing improved yeast nutrient supplementation regimes; improving robustness of wine yeasts and malolactic bacteria; improved understanding of the link between malolactic fermentation (MLF) and wine quality; and developing ‘low alcohol’ yeasts.

Projects:

• Using yeast to modulate wine flavour
• Generating wine yeasts that produce reduced levels of ethanol
• Non-conventional wine yeasts: interspecific yeast hybrids
• Managing fermentation nutrients to meet wine composition and sensory specification
• Increasing the robustness of wine yeasts
• Malolactic fermentation
• Constructing a wine yeast gene deletion library
• AWRI Wine microorganism culture collection
• Metabolomics: unravelling biochemical complexity
• Wine yeast genomics: outlining the genetic blueprint of wine yeast

Additional links:

• Industry Support - Microbiological Instabilities