Abstract:
Ageing of wines on lees involves keeping wines in contact with dying yeast cells for several months/years. Over recent years, ageing of wines on lees is becoming more and more familiar in the wine process and studies are made to analyse its influence on quality.
Ageing on lees is a winemaking technique consisting on maintaining the wine after fermentation in contact with the yeast lees to intensify the transfer of compounds between yeast cells and wine during yeast autolysis. Wine ageing on fine lees (essentially dead yeast cells) allows the release from the cell wall of different compounds into wines during yeast autolysis, such as polysaccharides, amino acids, fatty acids and mannoproteins, compounds that interact with the wine and give it texture and complexity.
In the present study, the effect of ageing on lees using 12 commercial maturation products was analyzed in white and rosé wines obtained in Iasi vineyard, vintage 2020. The aim of this experiment was to follow the evolution of physical-chemical and chromatic parameters of wines, depending on commercial maturation product used after alcoholic fermentation.
The first impression that the consumer receives from wine is colour and it influences the taste. Regarding chromatic parameters, an increase in colour intensity was evident for all samples after the ageing period on lees. The oenological products used for ageing on lees of wines showed a low influence on the physical-chemical characteristics: a low decrease in total acidity for Sauvignon blanc (samples V8S, V1S), a slight increase in total dry extract for the wines obtained from Busuioacă de Bohotin grapes (samples V12B, V2B, V10B and V4B).
The results show that this technique offers great prospects for improving the quality of wines.
