by WWFSM on Thu Oct 31, 2013 10:16 am
I'm imagining that most commercial wine have very few, if any, live organisms.
If I understand correctly, most wineries sterilize everything before starting the ferment, either with chemicals or pasteurization. Then they use carefully selected, commercial yeast to ferment the grape juice into wine. A lot of wineries will stop the ferment early, once it's at the specific alcohol content and flavour they are aiming for, by adding alcohol or a chemical (depending on the kind of wine) to the wine that will kill the yeast.
Note, I said most and a lot of...not all wineries. There must be some places in the world that still use the old methods. But I'm pretty certain this is the general rule, at least in North America, for commercial wine because fermenting with wild yeast leads to unpredictable results... large scale producers aim to make their wines consistent and cannot risk the variation you get with wild conditions. In Canada, at least, there seem to be a lot of laws that require commercial wineries take specific steps to sanitize at every step of the process.
It is possible that there is some live yeast and other organisms in commercial wine, however, they are likely limited to just a few cultures and not as wide a range as at-home, wild yeast fermentation. However, many of the other good-for-you-stuff in wine is still present.
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