Wine Making

Wine making essentially involves the fermentation of grape juice. The extraction of the grape juice is however a more complicated process than other fruit juices as the extraction of flavour components and colours (in the case of red wines) is far more important.

Grapes are harvested for wine making before the fruits have fully ripened. The unripe fruit therefore contains large amounts of insoluble protopectin which can absorb large quantities of juice during pressing and also results in viscous solutions which are difficult to process. The addition of pectinases during mashing can hydrolyse the pectins which increases the yield of juice, clarifies the resulting juice and prevents the juice from gelling. Some grapes also contain large amounts of arabinoxylans which can be treated with xylanases to aid processing.

Another specific problem in wine-making is the frequent infection of the grapes by the fungus Botrytis cinerea which produces ß-glucans which pass into the wine. These large molecular glucans hinder the clarification of the wine by clogging the filtration devices. The addition of ß-glucans can overcome this effect.

Other specialist uses of enzymes in wine making include the addition of proteases to improve colour stability in red wines by reducing the binding of polymerised tannins to proteins and the use of glycosidases to hydrolyse terpenyl glycosides thereby increasing the aroma or bouquet of the wine.

Contact us for all your requirements including:

• Enzyme activity analysis for quality control
• New product development
• Enzyme stabilisation
• Raw material analysis
• Process optimisation
• Finished product analysis