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Open Access Research Article Issue
Microbial and aroma characteristics of spontaneously fermented wine from organic grapes at the eastern foot of the Helan Mountain
Journal of Integrative Agriculture (JIA) 2026, 25(3): 1276-1285
Published: 05 August 2025
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Organic management practices and spontaneous fermentations have become focal points in wine research due to increasing consumer interest in healthy foods and sustainable agriculture. In this study, ‘Cabernet Sauvignon’ grapes sourced from organic and conventional management vineyard (OMV/CMV) in the Ningxia region were subjected to spontaneous fermentation. The microbial, oenological, and aroma profiles of grape must and resulting wines were assessed using high-throughput sequencing (HTS), high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), gas chromatography with mass spectrometry (GC-MS), and sensory evaluations. Network analysis was applied to explore relationships among microorganisms, volatile compounds, and aroma attributes. Results showed that organic management significantly increased microbial species richness, α-diversity, and the variety and concentration of aroma compounds, favoring the production of natural wines with complex aroma profiles. Relative abundance of Saccharomyces in OMV reduced, promoting the prevalence of other yeast species during fermentation. Bacterial succession in wines from OMV remained stable, with Pantoea as the dominant genus. Among oenological parameters, OMV wines significantly induced glycerol content, while reduced total acidity, tartaric acid, and citric acid content. These wines exhibited significantly higher levels of fermentative (+16%) and varietal (+72%) volatiles, as well as enhanced floral and sweet fruity aromas, along with distinct nail polish and vegetal notes. Additionally, Saccharomyces, Hanseniaspora, Metschnikowia, and Pantoea were strongly correlated with specific volatile compounds and aroma characteristics. This study provides valuable data that can inform spontaneous fermentation practices and guide vineyard management for natural wine production.

Issue
Origin subdivision of dry red wine from Helan Mountain's East Foothill based on the spectral characteristics of the color and taste indicators
Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering 2024, 40(15): 253-261
Published: 15 August 2024
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Northwest Helan Mountain's East Foothill is considered as one of best regions for grapes growing and fermenting. Helan Mountain's East Foothill has been divided to 5 wine origin included Shizuishan, Yinchuan, Yongning, Qingtongxia and Hongsibu. These still not establishes a scientific approach to classify and manage the wine origin because of different terroir. This study analyzed correlation and origin’s variance wine color and taste indicators producing by Helan Mountain's East Foothill, and identified the color and taste indicators relating to wine origin based on the leaves node weights of random forest. Then, the Fourier transform near infrared spectra (FT-NIR) and chemometrics methods were used to construct quantitative analysis models for each indicator. Finally, using the database composed by the predictive values of the color and taste indicators as the input layer, an artificial neural networks (ANN) model with ReLU as the optimal activation function was trained to classify the specific origin of wine from Helan Mountain's East Foothill. The research results indicated that tartaric acid esters and pH values had significant difference between the wine from different origins, and many indicators had strong correlation with other indicator. Based on the analysis of removing low weights parameters one by one, 14 wine color and taste indicators (lightness L, redness a, yellowness b, chroma Cab, total anthocyanins, monomer anthocyanin, polymeric anthocyanins, ionization index, flavonol, total tannin, ethanol index, tartaric acid ester, pH value, titrable acid) were considered as relevant to the origin. The FT-NIR quantitative analysis models of all 14 wine color and taste indicators had the bigger determination coefficient (r2c) than 0.95, the bigger relative percent deviation (RPDc) than 5, smaller root mean squared error (RMSEC) than 5% of the mean of each indicator for calibration set; and had the bigger determination coefficient (r2v) than 0.9, the bigger relative percent deviation (RPDv) than 2.5, smaller root mean squared error (RMSEV) than 15.7% of the mean of each indicator for validation set. The FT-NIR models had good quantitative prediction ability for 14 wine color and taste indicators. The 3 kinds of ANN models were established with different activation function include sigmoid, tanh and ReLU. The accuracies for determining of the origin of dry red wines were 84.06%, 91.30% and 94.20% separately. The model with ReLU as the activation function was proved to be the best one. Further analysis shows that the best model has 100% sensitivity and 100% accuracy in classifying the Shizishan wine samples, 100% sensitivity and 90% accuracy in classifying the Yanchuan wine samples, 87.5% sensitivity and 93.33% accuracy in classifying the Yongning wine samples, 94.74% sensitivity and 100% accuracy in classifying the Qingtongxia wine samples, 92.31% sensitivity and 92.31% accuracy in classifying the Hongsibu wine samples. The results indicated that the model proposed in this study can accurately discriminate the specific origin of wine from the Helan Mountain's East Foothill. This study would provide technical support for the product zoning management of dry red wines in the Helan Mountain's East Foothill, and help the establishment and development of Chinese wine origin protection system.

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