Number 38 on the list of 161 things to do during your undergraduate career at Cornell: Go on a wine tour. A prime tourist activity of the Finger Lakes, wine and winemaking is a process has been perfected over the years, culminating in a myriad of colors, textures and flavors that can appease any palette. Ramon Mira de Orduña, viticulture and enology, studies the microbiological aspect of winemaking and how it can improve the winemaking process in light of environmental change.

Despite having grown up exposed to the winemaking countryside of both France and Spain, it was not Mira de Orduña’s intention to pursue enology, the study of wine and winemaking. He began his academic career at the Eberhard-Karls Universität Tübingen in Germany with the intention of studying industrial microbiology, focusing on metabolism and lactic acid. It was not until he moved to New Zealand to obtain his Ph.D. from Massey University that he tied his interests in lactic acid fermentation back into his background and began to study the microbiological processes that control wine production.

The process of converting grape juice into wine is controlled by the yeast Saccharomyces and a large variant of microfauna. The yeast acts as the primary fermentation agent, converting the sugars from the grapes into ethyl alcohol, the alcoholic component in wine. Mira de Orduña focuses on the secondary processes controlled by microbiology, particularly those responsible for de-acidification and aroma modification.

“The role that bacteria play is a little less known and it all surrounds something that we call malolactic fermentation,” Mira de Orduña explained. “Malolactic fermentation is conducted by lactic acid bacteria, which are specific to wines, so they are similar to those that you find in yogurt, sausage, sauerkraut, except that they are specialized to growing and metabolizing in wine. The main role of this malolactic fermentation is biologically de-acidifying wine, rendering the wine softer, more balanced and more stable in the microbiological sense.”

However, with global climate change becoming a greater concern for scientists, winemaking is not exempt from the list of industries that will be impacted. Both viticulture and enology are volatile processes that are highly dependent on environmental factors such as water availability.

With the alteration of water availability and temperature, the sugar concentration in grapes rises, resulting in a higher alcohol potential for the wine made from the grapes. While many Cornell students may be more excited than dismayed over the prospect of a more alcoholic beverage, the increase in alcohol content can detract from the overall quality of the wine in several ways, due to the inhibition of secondary processes.

For example, the increase in alcohol content can inhibit the growth and performance of microorganisms necessary for the completion of vinification of the grape juice, which can result in a slowing or stop in fermentation. This halt in fermentation can result in an excess amount of sugar left in the wine and chemically unstable conditions in the wine that can result in wine spoilage. This chemical flaw in the wine composition can be corrected be altering the microorganism population of the wine. That is where Mira de Orduña’s research comes in.

“We’re interested in what organisms are in wines, what nutritional requirements they have, how do they degrade certain nutrients, what benefits do they gain from it, what implications this has for consumers, and what does this bring to the final product of the wine in terms of both the sensory quality and the composition,” Mira de Orduña said of his research goals.

While his research is centered around malolactic fermentation, Mira de Orduña studies not just how one species affects one aspect of winemaking, but how a vast array of bacterial species can influence and improve several aspects of winemaking. Unfortunately, preferences in wines amongst consumers vary dramatically, as well as the effects certain chemicals have on them.

“If you get a headache from a white wine or a red wine, it varies between people as to what chemicals in the wine could be causing the headache. It could be alcohol, polyphenols or sulfur dioxide (SO2), depending on the person,” Mira de Orduña explained, talking about the challenges of his research. For ethical reasons, it is hard to analyze what chemicals negatively affect the human body. “If it was SO2, you must consider the fact that SO2 is a very important preservative, an antimicrobial and an antioxidant, but considering the headaches, we would like to reduce SO2 levels. Our research would analyze which microbes bind SO2, making them unavailable as a preservative. Once we know what microbes are removing the SO2, we can control them and then have to add less SO2.”

Enology, as well as the entire food industry, is constantly presenting novel challenges for researchers to solve. Ultimately, Dr. Mira de Orduña hopes that his research will someday lead to a decrease in the energy requirements of wine production, allowing wineries to successfully produce high quality wines. After all, being a market of luxury, consumers appreciate only the finest of quality on their Finger Lakes wine tour.