Award from the American Society of Enology and Viticulture for the best oenological publication in 2020
On 19 August 2020, the scientific paper on "Distribution of Yeast Cells, Temperature and Fermentation By-Products in White Wine Fermentations" received an award at an online conference organized by the American Society of Enology and Viticulture. The team of authors, Mira Schwinn, Dominik Durner, Antonio Delgado and Ulrich Fischer, were partners in the successfully completed research project on "Reducing energy requirements in winemaking".
The cooperating research institutions are the Institute of Viticulture and Enology at the Rural Area Service Center (DLR) Rhenish Palatinate and the Chair of Fluid Mechanics at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität (FAU) Erlangen-Nürnberg.
In their pioneering work, the researchers investigated the sedimentation and buoyancy behavior of yeast cells in wine tanks. According to the authors, fermentation and temperature gradients in standard fermentation tanks are not uncommon and can lead to days-long fermentation delays in the lower tank layers in large tanks. Temperature differences of up to double digits were found and with them real risks of quality losses and errors that can occur during fermentation. The propagation and fermentation phases of yeasts, which were previously only differentiated from each other over time, were given a spatial dimension. The formation of fermenting and non-fermenting layers in wine tanks was described for the first time and with regard to problems for process safety.
Read more about this study at https://www.ajevonline.org/content/70/4/339. Dominik Durner presented the work to an interested specialist audience at an online conference organized by the American Society of Enology and Viticulture on 19 August.
