
MOUSY OFF-FLAVOURS IN WINES: UNVEILING THE MICROORGANISMS BEHIND IT
Abstract
Taints and off-flavours are one of the major concerns in the wine industry and even if the issues provoked by them are harmless, they can still have a negative impact on the quality or on the visual perception of the consumer. Nowadays, the frequency of occurrence of mousy off-flavours in wines has increased.
The reasons behind this could be the significant decrease in sulphur dioxide addition during processing, the increase in pH or even the trend for spontaneous fermentation in wine. This off-flavour is associated with Brettanomyces bruxellensis or some lactic acid bacteria metabolisms. Three N-heterocyclic compounds (APY, ETHP, ATHP) have been described as involved in mousiness perception. Thus far, no study addressed the variability in that N-heterocycles production according to microorganism strains from different species. Twenty-five wines presenting mousy off-flavour were analysed. In total, 252 bacte-ria with 90.5 % of Oenococcus oeni and 101 yeast strains with 53.5 % of Saccharomyces cerevisiae were isolated and identified. Even if B. bruxellensis have been isolated during this study, it has been shown that in most mousy wines, it wes not found.Their capacity to produce mousy compounds was investigated using Stir Bar Sorptive Extraction-Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (SBSE-GC-MS) in a standardised N-heterocycle assay medium (NHAM). While four and three species of yeast and bacteria, respectively, were isolated from mousy wines, only three species of microorganisms were associated with N-heterocycles production: B. bruxellensis, Lentilactobacillus hilgardii and Oenococcus oeni. The screening was then extended to collection strains for these three species to improve their genetic representativity. Our results show that the levels and the ratios of the three N-heterocycles present huge variations according to the species but all the tested strains were able to produce mousiness in the NHAM.
DOI:
Issue: OENO Macrowine 2023
Type: Poster
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Keywords
Mousy off-flavor, Brettanomyces bruxellensis, Lactic acid bacteria, Wine