Designing wine yeast for the future

Abstract Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast is integral to crafting well-balanced, flavoursome wines from simple, sugar-rich grape juice. Any improvements to wine yeast fermentation performance or the sensory properties it imparts to wine will therefore benefit winemakers and consumers. Frontier technologies, particularly the burgeoning “omics”-based fields of systems and synthetic biology, should therefore be of interest to the producer of high-quality wine. This chapter discusses the nexus between yeast research and winemaking. It addresses how winemakers and scientists face up to the challenges of consumer perceptions and opinions regarding the intervention of science and technology, and it raises important questions about the direction of yeast research, its contribution to science, and the future of winemaking.