SULPHREE Sulphite-free organic additives to be used in white wine-making process

For many years winemakers have been trying to solve the sulphites problem, but at the present time, there is no method or technology that enables to produce wine with very low added sulphites content. This proposal addresses the ever more growing requirement of a wine with a very small concentration of volatile sulphites. Such an increasing demand concerns a small part of the population, the sulphite sensitive people, but it is expected to spread among the entire population in the next 2 years. The SULPHREE project proposes to develop a new product for wine processing based on vegetal extracts. This product will be able to mimic the effect of the SO2 in white wine making process, thus guaranteeing the antioxidant and antibacterial action. The use of such a product will decrease the amount of added sulphites during vinification and to obtain, as final result, a concentration of volatile sulphites lower than 10 pm in white wines. This proposal wishes to satisfy the requirement for wines with low added-sulphites which is nowadays growing among the sensitive-sulphites consumers worldwide and which, as expected, will increase also among European non sensitive-sulphites people as of 2005, all European wines producers, will be obliged to label wines containing more than 10 pm of volatile added sulphites. The main innovative element of the project will be:- the development of a new natural product able to substitute partially SO? in the preservation of white wines,- The setting up of a new procedure to be used at industrial level for reducing by, at least, 75% the sulphites concentration in final white wine- The development of a new methodological tool for winemakers enabling for obtaining safer white wine with high quality standard