In the Search for Novel Wine Yeast with Deacidification Activity

Abstract

Copyright: © 2012 Kunicka-Styczyńska A. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Although Poland is not widely recognized as a wine-producing country, grapevine cultivation and winemaking dates back to the beginning of Christianity in this country in the 10th century. Over the centuries, vineyards and wineries have spread and are now located mainly in Zielona Góra, Małopolska, Sandomierz and Podkarpacie [1]. Grape cultivation in Poland has been intensively developing in the last years, with a total cultivated area of about 2000 ha with more than 2000 vineyards. According to the Council of the European Union, Poland has been classified as a wine-growing region A (the coldest), similarly as Germany, Austria, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, and Polish grape wines have been officially admitted to the EU market [2]. One of the main problems of cold-climate countries is an excess of grape acidity. However in Poland the grapes for cultivation are carefully selected, their acidity varies substantially from season to season. Moreover, fruit winery is well developed in Poland. In the light of Polish law, according to the Wine Making Act [3], branded fruit wine may also be produced from fruits other than grapes. Fruit wines have undoubtedly substantial potential for the Polish wine-making industry, with an output of 690,000 hL in the first three quarters of 2011. Poland is one of the leading producers of apples in the EU (24% of European production) [4], so apple musts are used in cider production and serve as a component of fruit wines. Moreover, Polish apple and cherry wines have been well received in Italy, Germany and Sweden [5].