Natural wines are fashionable at the moment and there is a lot of talk about the difficulty of making wine without adding sulphur. But what if it’s not that hard? Since a few years’ back there is something called bioprotection. It means that by adding special yeasts for the fermentation the wine makers can protect their must and their wines from oxidation and off flavours. Without using sulphur. (This is only one aspect of biocontrol. There are many others.)
The yeast varieties to be added are other than the usual Saccharomyces. These non-Saccaromyces yeast varieties are found in wild fermentation, usually in the beginning, before Saccharomyces cerevisiae takes over and finishes the fermentation. And now they are available also as cultured yeast.
In France, there are around 20 different non-Saccharomyces yeast varieties available on the market. The most common is Torulaspora delbrueckii. This yeast type reduces, among other things, the risk of the development of volatile acidity. So maybe this is the future for those producers who don’t want to add sulphur. Interesting.
