Context

This project aims to produce ecological yeast for wines and sparkling wines in order to allow companies to differentiate their product through the biodiversity of microorganisms that exist on their plot of land.
At present, the ability of each cellar to isolate and use its own autochthonous yeast is extremely limited in the wine production sector, due to the high costs of obtaining concentrated microbiological cultures produced under optimum conditions. Therefore, the majority of yeast strains used to create wines and sparkling wines (cava) are commercial strains, prepared on a large-scale by oenological product providers. This creates uniform final products, as many producers use the same yeasts. Furthermore, very few of these commercial yeasts are certified as ecological products. Currently, fewer than 5 yeast strains in the market are ecological, all produced outside of Catalonia.
There is, therefore, a need for local ecological yeast. Companies who wish to create ecological wines and cava – in order to improve the qualitative competitiveness in the sector–, cannot create them from autochthonous yeast from their own plot of land expanded using ecological raw materials.
This innovative pilot project aims to cover this need.