Yeast Cell Wall Chitin Reduces Wine Haze Formation

Protein haze formation in bottled wines is a significant concern for the global wine industry, and wine clarification before bottling is therefore a common but expensive practice. Previous studies have shown that wine yeast strains can reduce haze formation through the secretion of certain mannoproteins, but it has been suggested that other yeast-dependent haze protective mechanisms exist. On the other hand, the addition of chitin has been shown to reduce haze formation, likely because grape chitinases have been shown to be the major contributors to haze. In this study, Chardonnay grape must fermented by various yeast strains resulted in wines with different protein haze levels, indicating differences in haze protective capacities of the strains. The cell wall chitin levels of these strains were determined, and a strong correlation between cell wall chitin levels and haze protection capability was observed. To further evaluate the mechanism of haze protection, Escherichia co/i-produced green fluorescent protein (GFP)-tagged grape chitinase was shown to bind efficiently to yeast cell walls in a cell wall chitin concentration dependent manner, while commercial chitinase was removed from synthetic wine in quantities that also correlated with the cell wall chitin levels of the strains. Our findings suggest a new mechanism of reducing wine haze, and we propose a strategy for optimizing wine yeast strains to improve wine clarification. IMPORTANCE In this study, we establish a new mechanism by which wine yeast strains can impact the protein haze formation of wines, and we demonstrate that yeast cell wall chitin binds grape chitinase in a chitin concentration-dependent manner. We also show that yeast can remove this haze-forming protein from wine. Chitin has in the past been shown to efficiently reduce wine haze formation when added to the wine in high concentration as a clarifying agent. Our data suggest that the selection of yeast strains with high levels of cell wall chitin can reduce protein haze. We also investigate how yeast cell wall chitin levels are affected by environmental conditions.