Yeast Free Wines- Why Do All Wineries Manufacture Yeast Free Wines?

Mar 23
09:30

2010

Chad Smith

Chad Smith

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Around the world, there are hundreds of thousands of wineries with an enormous variety of flavors, color hues, and crushed berries.Each winery strives to produce the best quality of wine within their abilities. Is it a coincidence, then, that the best tasting, most colorful and aromatic are also yeast free wines?

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Wineries,Yeast Free Wines- Why Do All Wineries Manufacture Yeast Free Wines? Articles interestingly, have a key similarity with each other- the process in which they ferment their wines. To successfully ferment crushed berry juice into what we all know as “wine”, brewers chemically react yeast with oxygen, water, and glucose (sugar) to produce alcohol and a byproduct carbon dioxide. But if yeast is used in the chemical reaction to produce alcohol, then how can it be true that almost entirely yeast free wines are the only wines on the market?

There would be yeast present in all wines if it were not for the rigorous distillation and filtration that takes place before wineries ship their finished product. Sometimes, a wine may go through a filter up to ten times to affirm clear, unpolluted wine product. After this extensive distilling and filtering, all that remains is a clean, fragrant, flavorful, yeast free wine.

Wine manufacturers are not removing yeast bacteria solely to appeal to those on yeast free diets, however. So for what reasons do they go to such great extents to produce bottles of yeast free wine?           

A yeast bacterium is a live, active organism that will react every time it comes in contact with oxygen or sugars.  Thus, if a bottle of non-yeast free wine were stored without being filtered, the residual yeast bacteria would continue to react with the sugar and produce more alcohol and carbon dioxide, which would both ruin the taste of the wine and eventually build enough pressure in the bottle that cork would be blown off.  This, obviously, is not ideal as a finished product, and thus many measures are taken to avoid any leftover yeast from being present in the bottle of wine.