Impact of pulsed electric field treatment on must and wine quality

Abstract

Nowadays, consumers are demanding high-quality and healthy wines. This change in the trend of consumption could be considered a challenge to wine industry. For this reason, new technologies are being studied to better know their possible implementation in the oenological industry. One of these promising technologies is the pulsed electric field (PEF). This is a nonthermal technology in which high-intensity but short micropulses are applied to a liquid material placed between two electrodes. The energy causes the electroporation of cells what have two direct applications in oenology. The first technique is aimed to electroporate vegetal cells to enhance the extraction of interesting must and wine compounds and the other one is focused on electroporating the microorganism cells to render them inactivate. Both applications have demonstrated to be interesting and positive for general wine quality. PEF increases the grape volatile composition and reduces the volatile acidity of wines, furthermore interesting phenolic compounds related to color and healthy molecules as resveratrol are more extracted from grape skins after PEF treatments. Additionally, PEF inactivates the natural microbiota present in wines, being especially effective for bacteria as acetic acid and lactic acid bacteria populations. In spite of these positive applications of PEF for must and wine quality, further research is still needed to solve some possible problem of the scale-up of PEF from pilot plant to oenological industrial level.