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. 2025 Oct 12:31:103146.
doi: 10.1016/j.fochx.2025.103146. eCollection 2025 Oct.

From spontaneous to controlled: Simulating key aroma chemical characteristics of spontaneous fermentation with synthetic microbial community in Italian Riesling wine

Xue Zhang  1 , Tianyuan Zhang  1 , Yaoyao Song  1 , Yi Qin  1   2 , Yuyang Song  1   2 , Zhengwen Zhang  1   3 , Xingkai Liu  3 , Jiao Jiang  1 , Yanlin Liu  1   2
Affiliations

From spontaneous to controlled: Simulating key aroma chemical characteristics of spontaneous fermentation with synthetic microbial community in Italian Riesling wine

Xue Zhang et al. Food Chem X. .

Abstract

Flavor compounds present in wine are significant factors in determining consumer preference and style characteristics. The industrial single-strain fermentation model has led to a global crisis of flavor homogenization. The present study was conducted with the objective of providing the wine industry with guidance on the production of wines that exhibit consistent quality and regional style characteristics. To this end, the spatiotemporal succession patterns of fungal communities and Saccharomyces cerevisiae genotypes during Italian Riesling wines were investigated using high-throughput sequencing, culturomics and Interdelta analysis. GC-MS and OAV analysis identified 16 key aroma compounds. Four core strains of Starmerella bacillaris and S. cerevisiae SC1/SC21/SC23 were identified through a top-down approach, and synthetic colonies were constructed for fermentation verification. The results demonstrated that the synthetic community effectively replicated the key aroma chemical characteristics of Italian Riesling wine, providing an innovative fermentation strategy to enhance flavor complexity and market competitiveness of wine.

Keywords: Italian Riesling; high-throughput sequencing; key aroma compounds; spontaneous fermentation; synthetic microbial community.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Analysis of fungal community diversity during spontaneous fermentation of Italian Riesling. (A) Shannon index of the fungal community. (B) Chao1 index of the fungal community. (C) Principal Coordinate Analysis (PCoA) based on weighted UniFrac between fungal communities. (D) Relative abundance changes based on genus level (Top 10 relative abundances).
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Analysis of culture-dependent fungal communities during the spontaneous fermentation of Italian Riesling. (A) Changes in the abundance of the fungal community of species during fermentation. (B) Changes in the number of different genotypes of S. cerevisiae during fermentation.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Analysis of volatile aroma during spontaneous fermentation of Italian Riesling. (A) PCA analysis of volatile aroma of sample varieties at different stages. (B) Changes of different categories of aroma substances during fermentation.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Correlation analysis between important functional microbiota and key aroma compounds during spontaneous fermentation. (A) Correlation analysis of O2PLS model of microorganisms with key aroma compounds based on amplicon sequencing (Top 10 relative abundances). (B) Correlation analysis of O2PLS model of microorganisms with key aroma compounds based on culture-dependent methods. (C) Heat map of Pearman's correlation between different genotypes of S. cerevisiae and key aroma compounds (Table S5).
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Fermentation performance of core microbial strains. (A) Fermentation curve; (B) Glycerol; (C) Ethanol; (D) Acetic Acid.
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
Analysis of characteristics of Italian Riesling wine fermented with synthetic microbial community. (A) PCA analysis of key aroma compounds in Italian Riesling wine fermented with synthetic microbial community; (B) Analysis of key aroma compounds in Italian Riesling wine fermented with synthetic microbial community.
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