Sean O’Connor
The ancient art of winemaking is being revolutionised in biotech- nology laboratories around the world and leading the way are a group of scientists and students from Stellenbosch University, the nerve-centre of South Africa’s R3-billion a year wine industry.
Although steeped in tradition, wine production is now a hi-tech enterprise. This is largely due to the demands of a tough global marketplace, to which South Africa was rather rudely introduced in 1994. This began the shift from a producer-led industry characterised by overburdening statutory control to a market-led local industry. Wine quality has now been recognised as crucial to sustainable consumer satisfaction, which is why technology is being called upon to add certainty and consistency to a characteristically risky process: fermentation.
The international trend is to drink less wine but of a higher quality. Wine has become a high-value product associated with good food, leisure, tourism, the arts and entertainment all the trappings of an enviable lifestyle. With South African wine exports totalling only 3% of world sales, and an annual overproduction of six-billion litres a year in Europe, consistent quality has become the key to the future prosperity of this bedrock of the local economy. Pioneering technology is being used to ensure consistency and optimise flavour, so that vital niche markets can be nurtured and developed. But one requirement is that skills levels have to rise dramatically.
Enter Professor Sakkie Pretorius, director of the Institute of Wine Biotechnology at Stellenbosch, which was formed in 1995 to attract postgraduate students to an industry experiencing a critical undersupply of winemaking talent. As part of the university’s department of oenology and viticulture, which only produced between five and eight graduates a decade ago, the department now has a combined student count of more than 100, over half at postgraduate level. It has been recognised as a top-notch wine education facility, which can boast an international waiting list. Students from France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Germany, Argentina and Chile are studying here, although their access to the course is limited: Pretorius is unwilling to arouse the ire of the local industry, whom he feels would accuse him of using their money to educate the competition. However, he admits to being excited by the cultural cross-pollination the class presents.
Importantly, the money for research comes from Winetech (Wine Industry Network of Expertise and Technology). This structure administers a levy from more than 5 000 grape and wine producers, including big industry players such as KWV and Distell, which is then matched rand for rand by the Department of Trade and Industry’s Technology and Human Resources for Industry Programme (Thrip). According to Pretorius, Winetech is unique in that it optimises resources, “without a bureaucratic layer that soaks up the money”. Winetech has no office, and is run entirely by one person with a mobile phone, he says. It is a quite untypically South African structure, channelling all research in the entire wine industry, ensuring an absence of duplication and the maximum of applicability to well-researched and consensually defined long-term goals. This makes the Department of Trade and Industry very happy, and the quality assurance Winetech provides ensures the continuation of funding.
At present research at the institute is directed on three fronts: the reduction of pesticides; the elimination of chemical preservatives; and the enhancement of flavour and aroma. Already perceived as a leading authority in environmentally friendly wine practices, South Africa’s Integrated Production System has been proposed as an international model by the Office Internationale de la Vigne et du Vin, an authoritative international standards-controlling body.
Pretorius compares the work being done at the institute as “artillery directed at the target beyond the hills.” This makes it easier “for the infantry the winemakers and marketers to advance”, he says. Although most of this work is laboratory based, and subject to the principles and protocol of the South African Advisory Committee for Genetic Experimentation, which is in line with corresponding legislation in the European Union, North America and Australasia, the implications for South Africa’s image as an innovator and world leader are profound. “We are perceived as being highly responsive to the challenges of the market,’ he says, citing the emerging popularity of strategy workshops led by the institute currently being booked abroad.
However, although regarded as a pioneer in wine biotechnology, Pretorius is adamant that South Africa will never pioneer the first genetically modified (GM) wine, as the country is too dependant upon perceptions in the export market. “But should it become acceptable some day,” he states, “which looks increasingly likely, we’ll be a close second,” he continues, stressing that the capacity building of our intellectual resources is vital, considering that only five seed and petro-chemical companies already own patent rights to 90% of the world’s genetic plant material. “Unless we want to pay royalties to Monsanto in the future, we need to develop our own technology. But remember, we cannot create something that nature hasn’t created already,” he says.
Pretorius also remarks upon a perceived decline in anti-GM activity in the past two years, “and more awareness of the positive side of research”. This might be a function of the “open” nature of the institute, which publishes summaries of all its research online (www.sun.ac.za/wine_ biotechnology) and seems willing to engage in dialogue with its critics. “All the transgenic yeasts that have been developed at the institute are tested by Greenpeace in Germany,” says Pretorius. This is in marked contrast to the typically secretive nature of genetic research conducted in many other parts of the world.
On the biotechnological front, researchers at the institute have used clues from green beans to find a way of “unmasking” the natural resistance of grapes to invasive fungi and bacteria, by locating and changing a genetic “switch” that triggers a naturally occurring early-warning system.
Researchers at the institute are also leading the race to produce the world’s first preservative-free wine at present, all wines are preserved by the addition of sulphur dioxide. Research involves using a wine yeast strain that is able to kill spoilage bacteria, by using a cloned sample of yoghurt DNA that can be “read” by the yeast.
Professor Leon Dicks, of the university’s microbiology department, is also part of this initiative. His research team is developing anti-microbial peptides that “knock out” the bacterias that spoil wine. Another project funded by Winetech and Thrip at the university under Dicks’s guidance involves the stabilisation of malolactic fermentation, the important “secondary fermentation” that reduces the acidity of wine. (Malic acid is one of the two principal acids in grapes, which contributes a sour taste when present in high concentrations, and is converted to lactic acid when sugars that wine yeast does not ferment are broken down.)
Traditionally, this has been an unreliable process. However, a new non-GM yeast strain developed at the institute has proven to ferment very efficiently under South African conditions low nitrogen input and high sugar content and is now made under licence and sells 30 tonnes a year.
And then we enter the realms of taste. Activation of existing aroma compounds in grape must, most of which are linked to other molecules, is being pioneered at the institute through the use of aroma-liberating enzymes. This develops existing flavours, instead of inserting new ones. Similar research is being conducted by a man named Loftie Ellis at Elsenberg, a winemaking school and working estate outside Stellenbosch. Ellis is pioneering research into important chemical compounds present in well-matured brandy, an industry worth more than R800-million in annual excise duties and VAT alone.
One problem for brandy makers has been the exorbitant costs of imported oak barrels that release the spirit’s distinctive flavour and aromas during maturation. Through sophisticated gas chromatography and mass spectrometry Ellis has shown that the addition of wood staves or blocks into used barrels can achieve similar high-quality results. “We know what these flavours are and how to analyse them,” says Ellis. “In the past, we were limited to sensory evaluation. Science now enables us to develop a distinct blend for a specific market.” Off the record, this usually means producing a “soft” local variety that mixes well with Coke.
With a thirsty and lucrative market in the Far East increasingly disenchanted by highly priced Cognac and Armagnac, the South African brandy industry looks poised for profit. A certain amount of reinvention and branding must first take place. However, this depends on legislative change: at present, brandy must be matured for three years in the same barrel. For every year in the barrel, it loses about 5% volume through evaporation, the so-called “angel’s share”.
Ellis’s research implies savings in a costly business. Legislative change cannot come fast enough. However, scientific innovation often moves too quickly for an enabling statutory response, as public watchdogs take time battling the implications of tradition and change. Perhaps a few well-placed kegs of our finest local brandy could speed up the process.