科学美国人60秒:Microbes May Contribute to Wine's "Character"

When it comes to wine, the concept of "terroir" is sort of a nebulous thing. Terroir is sometimes translated as the wine’s character. Here's how my friend Valerie, a wine importer, explained it: "I would say terroir is a specific set of natural elements that all come together in harmony to produce a very specific outcome. The soil, the exposure to the sun, the drainage, the proximity to water, the fog, all of these things, they all come together in an expression that we find beautifully in the grape."
当谈论到葡萄酒，“风土条件”的概念在某种程度上是极其模糊的。“风土条件”有时候会翻译成葡萄酒的品质。我的朋友瓦莱丽，葡萄酒进口商，这样解释它：我认为风土条件是一组特定的自然元素，所有元素和谐的组合在一起，会产生非常具体的结果。土壤，暴露在太阳下，排水管道，临近水域，薄雾，所有这些事物，它们聚合起来，从某种意义上说我们在葡萄里发现了美妙之处。

Some of those factors might be hard to measure. But here's a new one that might contribute a quantifiable essence to terroir: the grapes' microbiome. "It certainly could be that the "house microbiome" influences the wines in overt or subtle ways that we don't understand yet." David Mills, a microbiologist at U.C. Davis. Mills worked with the Far Niente and Nickel & Nickel wineries in California’s Napa Valley. The winemakers took five samples of Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon fermentations as the juice transformed to wine. Then Mills and his colleagues ran microbial and chemical tests on those time-dependent samples.
其中一些因素可能很难衡量。但这里存在一个新的因素可能影响土壤的可量化本质：葡萄的微生物群。“微生物群”会以公开或隐蔽的方式影响葡萄酒，而我们至今还不理解。大卫·米尔斯，戴维斯加州大学的微生物学家。在加州的纳帕山谷，米尔斯曾在法尼恩特酒厂、尼克尔与尼克尔酒庄工作。葡萄酒生产商将夏敦埃酒和卡百内红葡萄酒五个发酵样品作为汁液制成红葡萄酒。然后米尔斯与他的同事一起对这些依赖时间的样品进行微生物和化学测试。

They found that the bacterial and fungal species on the grapes corresponded to a certain chemical fingerprint—a mix of metabolites—in the finished wines. "And we also were able to use this to predict and make a model, where we might be able to predict the kind of metabolites that show up in a wine." They did not do sensory tests in this study—no smelling or tasting. But along with past research, the findings suggest that microbes do affect the wines’ terroir. The study appears in the journal mBio. [Nicholas A. Bokulich et al., Associations among Wine Grape Microbiome, Metabolome, and Fermentation Behavior Suggest Microbial Contribution to Regional Wine Characteristics]
他们发现，在最终酿制成的葡萄酒中，葡萄上的细菌和真菌的物种与一个特定的化学指纹图谱相对应——代谢物的混合体。我们也能利用这个来进行预测并做出模型，其中我们也许能够预测出现在葡萄酒中的代谢产物。在这项研究中，他们不做感官测试——不用闻气味、不需要品尝。但是连同过去的研究，研究结果表明，微生物的确会影响葡萄酒的品质。这项研究发表在生物学期刊上。

Mills says microbes could help winemakers differentiate their wines from competitors'…and diagnose trouble before fermentation even begins. "I mean I can imagine a winemaker would want to know at the start of their fermentations, is it a good microbiota year or is it a not so good microbiota year? And maybe they can change their winemaking practice accordingly." While we wine drinkers raise a glass to those terroir-forming microbes. 
米尔斯表示微生物可以帮助酿酒师从竞争对手中区别出他们的酒。在发酵甚至开始前诊断故障。“我的意思是我可以想象一个酿酒师在他们开始发酵之前会想知道这是一个好的微生物群年还是一个不太好的微生物群年，并且或许他们会相应地改变他们的酿酒手段。与此同时，我们葡萄酒饮用者们为这些形成风土条件的微生物群举杯。

—Christopher Intagliata
克里斯托弗·因塔格里塔报道。