Pilot Scale Evaluation of Wild Saccharomyces cerevisiae Strains in Aglianico

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an excellent and interesting paper. It concerns the topic of great importance – the selection of starter cultures at wine production. Unlike traditional studies on this topic that are usually performed in laboratory scale level, this manuscript describes the results of experiments conducted at pilot-scale level. Yeast strains that were studied showed different trends and significant differences for each class of tested compounds. It is extremely important that this paper shows the strategy for wine producers to discriminate a strain that is preferential for the definite conditions and a specific type of wine. Only such approach gives the possibility to mimic real industrial conditions and to predict an aromatic quality of wine that may be achieved by using a particular yeast strains. The paper is very well written, describes in detail used methods and contains all necessary information for the technologists. Results are well described and discussed. I do not have any remark and would like to recommend to accept this manuscript for the publication in Fermentation as it is.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

Numerous publications demonstrate the diversity of yeast strains and their behavior elaborated in small scale fermentations. The manuscript tries to fill the gap of having only few information so far when selected wine yeasts (esp. Saccharomyces cerevisiae) perform in larger volumes or at leasts in pilot scale.

Microbial and chemical data checking seven yeast strains during and after fermentations are well presented. Volume size of 1 hl is highly appreciated.

However a big gap remains as blind wine tastings with expert panels are missing. Concentration differences of potential volatile yeast compounds deliver just an idea of diversity but they cannot prove that the sensory impressions are definitely different! If tasting data are available or tastings could be organized on short term, this would increase the quality of the manuscript significantly.

If impossible, threshold levels of major compounds should be mentioned within the manuscript. It can be accepted then.

Some additional remarks:

Wine aroma is a complex system of grape derived and yeast derived flavour compounds. This should be mentioned at different sites not focusing too much on yeast metabolites as key factors of typicity.

Suppl. Table 1: all titles above the columns are missing!

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf