Yeast epigenetics and its potential applications in oenology

Abstract

The development of new wines is fraught with expense, long production times and laborious techniques that may not yield the desired results. However, select epigenetic compounds have been experimentally shown, for the first time, to alter the characteristics of wine by altering yeast gene expression through histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor activity. This technology reduces time and is less expensive compared to existing strategies to develop new wines, such as viticulture techniques, chemical processing and new yeast species isolation. While viticultural practices and new yeast species isolation may not provide the sought after characteristics, chemical processing is also not a desired alternative due to the occurrence of adverse organoleptic properties. Another approach, plant breeding for new wine varieties might take many years if not decades to achieve results. As such, the proposed novel technology, utilizing epigenetics, provides opportunities to develop unique new wines in a fraction of time compared to other methods. This technology has the potential to solve some or all of the issues with current practices for developing new wine varieties.