Microbiological control of Ageing wine

Sometimes it has been observed that the presence of some spoilage microorganisms does not result in spoilaged wine and conversely, certain changes are not correlated with the presence or detection of these microorganisms. The hypothesis of the project is that microbial communities are responsibles of the spoilage of wine and not the particular presence of one or another species. Therefore, this project proposes the use of metagenomics and metatranscriptomics for detailed analysis of microbial communities present and metabolically active, respectively, in different wines from different wineries in various wine regions and in different post fermentation phases. The objectives are determination of microbiological fingerprint of aged wines from the different proposed regions, detection of metabolically active microorganisms and differenciation with those present during the aging of wine, the relationship between alteration of wines and changes of microbial populations and chemical compounds, exploitation of the results of the project for the creation of an effective and direct method based on molecular methods for the detection of alterations in the wine.