**3. Conclusions**

As in other ecological studies of wine fermentations, spontaneous alcoholic fermentations in the Rioja qualified designation of origin are mainly conducted by yeasts of the *S. cerevisiae* species*,* and the non-*Saccharomyces* species have only been detected in the early stages. These fermentations have been carried out by different

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**Author details**

in the fermentation.

**Conflict of interest**

provided the original work is properly cited.

La Rioja, CSIC, Logroño, La Rioja, Spain

© 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

Pilar Santamaría, Rosa López, Maria del Patrocinio Garijo, Rocío Escribano, Lucía González-Arenzana, Isabel López-Alfaro and Ana Rosa Gutiérrez\*

\*Address all correspondence to: ana-rosa.gutierrez@unirioja.es

ICVV, Institute of Vine and Wine Sciences, Government of La Rioja, University of

*Biodiversity of Saccharomyces cerevisiae Yeasts in Spontaneous Alcoholic Fermentations: Typical…*

Different agronomic and technological factors can influence in the diversity of the yeasts present in each vinification, such as the age of the winery, the winemaking system employed, and the climate conditions that prevailed during the ripening period of the grapes. The vinifications carried out in newly constructed wineries presented a lower clonal diversity than those which took place in older wineries. The clonal diversity was higher in vinifications conducted by carbonic maceration than in those carried out after crushing and destemming grapes. Unfavorable climatology during the vegetative period decreased the number of strains that participated

There were very few common strains that participated in the fermentations carried out in successive years within the same winery, and hardly any common strains were detected in different wineries of the same sub-zone during the 4 years studied. All this allows us to affirm that there are no representative "typical" strains of the wineries, nor of the sub-zones and, therefore, of the Rioja designation of origin.

*S. cerevisiae* strains that have appeared throughout the different stages of the process. Out of the 915 colonies of *S. cerevisiae* analyzed, 330 different clones have

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.84870*

been identified, which means a very high clonal diversity.

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

*Biodiversity of Saccharomyces cerevisiae Yeasts in Spontaneous Alcoholic Fermentations: Typical… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.84870*

*S. cerevisiae* strains that have appeared throughout the different stages of the process. Out of the 915 colonies of *S. cerevisiae* analyzed, 330 different clones have been identified, which means a very high clonal diversity.

Different agronomic and technological factors can influence in the diversity of the yeasts present in each vinification, such as the age of the winery, the winemaking system employed, and the climate conditions that prevailed during the ripening period of the grapes. The vinifications carried out in newly constructed wineries presented a lower clonal diversity than those which took place in older wineries. The clonal diversity was higher in vinifications conducted by carbonic maceration than in those carried out after crushing and destemming grapes. Unfavorable climatology during the vegetative period decreased the number of strains that participated in the fermentation.

There were very few common strains that participated in the fermentations carried out in successive years within the same winery, and hardly any common strains were detected in different wineries of the same sub-zone during the 4 years studied. All this allows us to affirm that there are no representative "typical" strains of the wineries, nor of the sub-zones and, therefore, of the Rioja designation of origin.
