Abstract
Aim: In the few past years, consumer expectation has shifted toward low-additive foodstuffs. In the wine industry, this has been evidenced by the development of wines without any added SO2 during the winemaking process, including bottling. This has also led to the development of alternative methods to replace SO2 for winemaking, which, alongside the dearth of studies on these new production methods, raises the question of the sensorial impact of sulfites and sulfite alternatives on wines after aging.Methods and results: Wines were made from Merlot N. grapes at two different maturity levels, with or without SO2 addition throughout the whole process. From the same batch, wines were also produced with bioprotection applied to the harvest only as an alternative to SO2. Sensory evaluation was performed after two years of aging, with the development of specific and adapted training methods to determine the sensory profile of the wines. In this way, a high sensory proximity between wines without SO2 (whether produced with bioprotection or not) was highlighted, and they were described as significantly different from wines with SO2. Conclusion: This approach demonstrated that, for expert tasters and despite the use of bioprotection, wines without SO2 had specific sensory characteristics compared to wines with SO2.Significance of the study: This study was a first sensory step towards characterising wines produced without any added SO2. In future work, it could be used to highlight chemical compounds associated with sensory descriptors discriminating between them.
Highlights
Sulphur dioxide (SO2) is one of the most popular additives in the winemaking process, and can be added at different strategic stages: on the must, after fermentation, during wine aging, and at bottling
It has been shown that exposure to sulfites can cause a range of adverse clinical effects in susceptible individuals, ranging from dermatitis to urticaria, including redness, hypotension, abdominal pain and diarrhea, as well as anaphylactic and asthmatic reactions (Timbo et al, 2004; Vally et al, 2009; García-Gavín et al, 2012)
The objective of this study was to determine the sensory profiles of wines produced using different winemaking processes after 1.5 years of bottle maturing: a classical treatment with SO2, another one with bioprotection and a last one without any treatment
Summary
Sulphur dioxide (SO2) is one of the most popular additives in the winemaking process, and can be added at different strategic stages: on the must, after fermentation (alcoholic and malolactic), during wine aging, and at bottling. It possesses three main properties: antioxidant (Carrascón et al, 2018; Waterhouse, 2012), antioxidasic (Dubernet and Ribéreau-Gayon, 1973; Ribéreau‐Gayon et al, 2017), and antimicrobial (Constanti et al, 1998; Albertin et al, 2014). The use of sulfur dioxide (SO2) can be harmful to humans, both for process operators when the usual precautions are not taken, and more generally for highly sensitive consumers. In the context of global warming, an increase in wine pH implies lower SO2 efficiency
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