What do the wasps with the flavor of the wine

Somewhere out there in the vineyards, a small, flying sommelier, takes care of a good production of wine…
Is a wasp that makes new varieties of yeast for the fermentation of the must.
The unlikely relationship of the insect with the wine it was discovered by european ecologists who are studying the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the most common kind of yeast for the fermentation of wine, beer and bread.
“Hatchery” for the fungus of the yeast
The fungus lives over the ripe grapes, and are even visible with the naked eye as a white fluffy layer that won’t go away even with washing.
The stems of the S.cerevisiae vary from region to region and is one of the factors that give slightly different taste every local wine.
The new study, which will be published in the next issue of the inspection PNAS, reveals that the fungus yeast lives within the intestine of certain social wasps such as the european species Polistes dominula, which is fed, inter alia, with ripe grapes.
And as it turns out, the gut of the wasp works as an aphrodisiac for fungus and encourages them to interbreed and create completely new strains.
In the first phase of the experiment, the researchers gave the wasps food that contained five different strains of S.cerevisiae. Then, they left the insects to overwinter for four months.
After this period, the research team found that the different strains they were crossed among themselves in the gut of the insect and they had to give new strains, just as happened with the same strains of yeast which have been allowed to interbreed in the laboratory.
A significant presence in the vineyard
Moreover, in the wasps, some strains of S.cerevisiae were cross-checked with the different type of S.paradoxus, something that doesn’t happen often in nature -an indication that the intestines of the wasp’s ideal sexual nest for the σακχαρομύκητες.
The study is not sufficient to prove that the wasps affect the taste of wine, the researchers believe, however, that the insects play a key role in the characteristics of each local variety.
“The preservation of the uniqueness [of each local variety] requires the preservation of the uniqueness of the microbial communities’ comments on the website of the Science Duccio Cavalieri, University of Florence, head of the study.
As shown, the conservation of biodiversity in the areas of vineyards have a greater significance than what you would have thought the winemakers.
And this is something that we need to take into account before they spray their vineyards with pesticides.

Exit mobile version