ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Food Microbiology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1679638
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvances in Microbial-Based Solutions: Food Coloring, Flavoring and FragranceView all 8 articles
Investigation of Smoke-Taint Precursor Modification by Glycosidase Activity in Diverse Wine Yeast and Bacterial Strains
Provisionally accepted
- Washington State University Department of Viticulture and Enology, RICHLAND, United States
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The increasing prevalence of wildfires presents a growing risk to wine production through the development of smoke-taint, a sensory defect in wine caused by volatile phenols absorbed by grapevines during smoke exposure. In grapes and wine, these volatile phenols are often present in glycosylated forms that can be hydrolyzed during fermentation, releasing undesirable smoky aromas. This study investigated the glycosidase activity of diverse Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Oenococcus oeni strains to evaluate their roles in modulating smoke-taint-associated glycosides during wine fermentation. Mini-scale alcoholic and malolactic fermentations were conducted in synthetic media enriched with flavor extracts from smoke-exposed grapes using reverse osmosis. LC-MS profiling revealed strain-dependent hydrolysis of glycosides, linked to smoke-taint. Notably, S. cerevisiae strains UCD514 and UCD525, and O. oeni strain UCD199, showed the highest glycosidase activity. Principal component analysis further confirmed that individual microbial strains had distinct metabolic impacts on glycoside profiles. This study highlights a wide range of glycosides that can be hydrolyzed by wine yeast and bacteria. These findings demonstrate the dual potential of microbial glycosidase activity to mitigate smoke-taint while enhancing wine aroma. In addition, the results help distinguish smoke-taint-associated glycosides that are resistant to microbial hydrolysis from those that are readily cleaved, enabling targeted removal of released aroma compounds through downstream filtration approaches.
Keywords: glycosidase, Smoke-taint, Yeast and bacteria, Wine aroma, flavor extract, glycoside precursor
Received: 05 Aug 2025; Accepted: 10 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Piao, Collins and Henick-Kling. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Hailan Piao, hailan.piao@wsu.edu
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