News & Stories

Fine wine, faster

This wine research is making sparkling discoveries.

How can we get beautiful wines faster, without compromising on quality?

Dr Fiona Kerslake, fermentation scientist at the Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture at the University of Tasmania, is trying to find out.

Tasmania is a well-known sparkling wine region. But it is surprisingly under-researched.

 “We’re looking at whether we can get some of the quality characteristics of an 18 month old wine into wine when it’s only a year, or even only nine months, old. This could have a big financial impact on industry.”

And the research is looking very positive.

“We had a tasting of wines after only six months, and we could already see big differences between the treatments we had applied in the vineyard.”

Dr Kerslake enlisted the help of Australia’s best sparkling wine makers to taste the product.

“The great thing was that we could literally see industry take something away on the day that they could potentially do in their own wineries.

We’re really following the industry’s lead in researching questions that they have. We’re filling the gaps in the knowledge.

With sparkling wine being relatively under-researched, there aren’t many methods to analyse the wine – and none of them are fast.

“We have been developing a new, rapid, objective measure of sparkling wine quality that could also be used on white wines, which industry could also use.

“It’s basically a scan throughout the UV visible spectrum of light and from that we can get a fingerprint of the phenolics that are in the wine.”

Phenolics are what contribute to texture and mouthfeel of wine, and they are an important contributor to the style of the wine, and to consumer preference.

“I’m passionate about wine, so I get to marry something that is a personal interest with my job, and that makes it really easy to come to work every day.

The future is really bright in Tasmania for the wine industry.

When she isn’t working in the vineyard or the laboratory, Dr Kerslake is busy promoting the importance of women in science as one of the national Superstars of STEM.

The  Science and Technology Australia Superstars of STEM program is about raising the profile of female role models working within science, technology, engineering and maths, something close to Dr Kerslake’s heart.

“They’re helping us to be amazing role models.

One of my main drivers for applying for the program was my three year old daughter. When it comes time for her to start making decisions about what direction she wants to go in life, it would be wonderful if gender is not an issue.

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