Supercritical CO(2) Processing of White Grape Must as a Strategy to Reduce the Addition of SO(2)

In winemaking, sulfur dioxide addition is the most common procedure to prevent enzymatic and microbial alterations. However, the enological industry looks for safer alternatives to preserve enological products, and high-pressure treatments with supercritical CO(2) are a suitable alternative. This study evaluates the effectiveness of this process in the stabilization and preservation of white grape must, studying the influence of time, pressure, and CO(2) percentage on must characteristics. In spite of the percentage of CO(2) turned out to be the variable that affects the most the process, no remarkable differences were observed in pH, acidity, and color intensity between untreated and treated musts. Moreover, this technique has proven to be very efficient in the reduction of aerobic mesophilic microorganisms as well as in the reduction of residual polyphenol oxidase activities, being lower than those obtained with SO(2) addition (60 and 160 mg/L). Based on the results, the most convenient conditions were 100 bar and 10% CO(2), for 10 min treatment.