A pre-spoilage marker for bacterial activity in fortified wine, conversion of L-malic acid to L-lactic acid

• Autor(a) principal: Revel, G. de
• Data de Publicação: 1994
• Outros Autores: Capela, Ana Bela, Hogg, T.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/5483

Sixty-one different fortified wines, from the Douro valley, inoculated with Lactobacillus hilgardii previously isolated from a spoiled fortified wine, were sampled progressively for 280 d. Samples were analysed for volatile acidity (acetic acid) and frozen for subsequent analysis where appropriate. After 280 d, 7/61 wines showed increases in volatile acidity of >0.5 g l-1 and were considered spoiled. Retrospective analysis of frozen samples of spoilage-positive wines showed that all had apparently undergone a malolactic conversion before the onset of heterolactic activity (acetate production). It is suggested that the monitoring of L-lactic acid might be a method of detecting activity of spoilage lactobacilli before the onset of spoilage.