ABSTRACT
Yeast Strain Development ............................................................................. 358 Acknowledgments .................................................................................................. 359 References .............................................................................................................. 359
The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae has long been used in the food and beverage industries of winemaking, baking, and brewing. During winemaking, S. cerevisiae is indispensible for converting grape juice into the complex aromatic beverage that is wine. Wine fermentation represents one of the world’s oldest biotechnological processes, with wine production being reported as far back as 7000-5000 BCE in the region of Asia Minor, between the Black and Caspian Seas (Pretorius 2000). Historically, a lack of understanding of the primary factors that regulate wine fermentation con›ned wine production to the spontaneous fermentation of grape juices, a process with a highly variable success rate. These production inef›ciencies relegated ›ne wine to becoming an expensive beverage the consumption of which was restricted to the wealthy. Today, the image of wine has changed completely. The highly controlled, large-scale production methods of modern winemaking allow wine to be supplied at high quality and low cost. This signi›cant progress in wine production has been catalyzed by the continuous scienti›c research that has sought to progressively unravel the mysteries of wine fermentation.
