NUTRITIVE WINE

PRODUCTION OF AN INNOVATIVE WINE BY SUBSTITUTING SULPHIDES FROM EXTRACTS OF VINIFICATION BY-PRODUCTS WITH STRONG ANTIOXIDANT ACTION

“NUTRITIVE WINE” 

THE SINGLE WINERY AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVE OF SAMOS (Samos EOS) which produces the internationally recognized and acclaimed (as brand name wines) wines of SAMOS, within the framework of the program «"Strengthening cooperation agreements between businesses and research and innovation bodies" with MIS code 3901 of the North operational program NutriwineAegean 2014-2020 of the North Aegean Region, is implementing the above two-year research program 2021 – 2022 with ACTION CODE: ΒΑΡ2-0060608, in collaboration with the Department of Food Science & Nutrition of the University of the Aegean (subcontractor of the program). The project is co-financed by the European Union – European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and by National Resources.

The aim of this project is the pilot production, study and promotion of an innovative wine product without the addition of sulfites, with high antioxidant activity and organoleptic acceptance. This production will utilize winemaking by-products and will be based on the substitution of sulfites by bioactive components, derived from the winemaking process itself. The bioactivity of the produced product will be studied in vitro and ex-vivo in terms of antioxidant and antithrombotic activity, which are parameters related to the prevention of the development of chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases.

The production of such innovative wine products is in line with the new trends indicated by market research in the industry, where the consumer appears to be increasingly choosing wines without the addition of exogenous ingredients.

In this project, by collecting the winemaking by-products and studying their extraction under different conditions, the optimal extract production will be achieved in terms of the content of various classes and types of phenolic compounds with various tests (ABTS, DPPH, FRAP, CUPRAC). In the next stage, pilot winemaking will take place with the addition of the selected extracts in substitution of sulfites and will be monitored with oenological analyses. The produced wine will be bottled as a final product, while at the same time the in vitro and ex-vivo bioactivity studies mentioned above will be carried out.

The project manager for the company is: Ioannis Skoutas, President of the Cooperative, while on the part of the University of the Aegean he is the Charalambos Karantonis, Associate Professor of Food Chemistry in the Department of Food Science & Nutrition.

In recent years, several alternative methods and practices have been applied to exert a preservative effect similar to that of SO2, but without its negative side effects. Some of them involve physical methods, such as the use of high pressures or ultrasound and pulsed electric fields (Guerrero & Cantos-Villar, 2015). These techniques, despite their promising results in terms of preservative action, have the disadvantages of lacking the antioxidant activity required to avoid oxidation reactions in wines and of high investment costs.

With this research project, THE UNITED WINERY AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVE OF SAMOS (Samos EOS), within the framework of its modern development strategy in the post-COVID-19 era, is dynamically launching the R&D sector in order to be able to offer the consumer, soon and first in the new era, innovative wines, of special ingredients and value, with unique organoleptic properties!

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PRODUCTION OF AN INNOVATIVE WINE BY SUBSTITUTING SULPHIDES FROM EXTRACTS OF VINIFICATION BY-PRODUCTS WITH STRONG ANTIOXIDANT ACTION

– “NUTRITIVE WINE”