The Australian Wine Research Institute

Capturing and re-using aroma compounds entrained in fermentation gases

Project summary

The capture and re-use of volatile compounds from fermentation gases presents powerful opportunities for the Australian wine industry, if the technology can be applied in an efficient and cost-effective manner. The ability to control or alter the flavour and aroma of wine through the back-addition of aroma/flavour condensate has been identified as one opportunity. This approach could allow wine styles to be tailored to suit consumer preferences and also facilitate the development of new products. Additionally, it is well understood that increased temperature leads to faster ferments but at the risk of losing aromatic characters in the finished wine. Aromatic capture could remove this barrier, thus increasing fermentation throughput by allowing higher temperature and thus faster ferments. This project builds on preliminary work undertaken in this field and will deliver the following outputs:

• Benchmarking and understanding current fermentation limitations;
• Evaluation and improvement of current aroma collection apparatus;
• Profiling of captured aroma compounds and how these could be fractionated to allow targeted back additions and/or new product development opportunities;
• Establishment of key fermentation parameters to maximise wine value and fermentation throughput; and
• Identifying captured aromatic compounds, their behaviour and potential value in a range of wine production applications.