Wednesday 23 February 2011

New Zealand News

Amid the very sad news of the Christchurch earthquake we are pleased to say that our nearby Marlborough wine producers were almost completely unaffected - indeed for them the worse earthquake was in fact the first one last year. NZ wine supplies should continue unaffected.

Tuesday 22 February 2011

Head hurting

A food chemist at the University of British Colombia has received approval from the authorities in Canada and the USA to use a genetically modified yeast which achieves malolactic fermentation (though the malolactic is not strictly a fermentation but a bacterial reaction see here - but we digress) at the same time as the alcoholic fermentation. This produces fewer biogenic amines (the neurotransmitter, histamine is an example) that produces allergic reactions -particularly headaches- in some people. The modified yeast doesn't introduce any genetic material that would not be present anyway in the normal bacterial malolactic fermentation. A gene from malolactic bacteria was, apparently, spliced it into the DNA of some wine yeast and the resulting yeast completes the alcoholic fermentation and the malolactic fermentation simultaneously. Clever - and quicker. But not all wineries like to add yeast - many prefer to let naturally occurring yeasts do the job. And because it is genetically modified nobody will admit to using it - so if you are looking for that wine that's not going to give you a headache you might get the headache just looking for it. And being genetically modified it has not been approved in Europe. So at least that's one headache we won't - or perhaps will - be getting.