Research Progress of Artificial Ageing Technologies of Wine

Abstract:

Wine ageing is an important process to produce high-quality wines. Traditionally, wines are aged in oak barrel ageing systems. Oak barrel has important roles on the aroma component, color, stability and clarification of wines, however, due to several disadvantages of barrel ageing technology, including the high cost of oak barrel, the long ageing time required and the large space taken up by barrels, which seriously affect and restrict the production capacity and economic benefit of the enterprise. Therefore, on the premise of guarantee the quality of wine, using the artificial ageing technology to shorten the aging time, improve wine quality and reduce production costs become a hot area of research in recent years. This paper reviews recent developments of the artificial ageing technologies of wine, such as treating the wine with microoxygenation, oak products, high hydrostatic pressure, magnetic field, irradiation, etc. The impacts of each technology on wine quality during ageing were analyzed, and comparisons among these artificial ageing technologies were made. Furthermore, several strategies to produce highquality wines in a short ageing period were also proposed.