Most wine producers are firmly convinced that in a wine's quality are involved just the soil and the climate, beside of the grape variety.

But Associate Professor Geoffrey Skurray from University of Western Sydney found that the type of yeast used in wine producing can be just as important as the geo-climate factors.

Experimenting on Australian Shiraz, the expert discovered that the particular features of a top quality wine, like smell, color and flavor, can be obtained by using the right yeast strain in the fermentation process.

Different yeast strains of yeast produced different wine flavor, such as blackberry and plum, or black pepper and others.

"Our research clearly shows that the yeast strains used during alcoholic fermentation play a significant role in determining the color, aroma, mouthfeel and overall flavor of Shiraz," said Skurray.

Wine producers could "tune" the type of wine by using the appropriate yeast strain in the technological process.

In these experiments, 10 different types of yeast were probed.

Yeast (photo) is a fungus critical in the technology of wine (and all alcoholic beverages in general): it turns the sugar into alcohol.

Yeasts are also critical in producing bread, yoghurt, cheese, tofu or pickles.

"In the past, winemakers stuck to one type of yeast and did not think of it as contributing to the wine's flavor", added Skurray.

"French winemakers talk about "terroir" - the influence of geography on the grapes," he says.

"However this research shows is that you can influence the character of wine."

In a previous study, Skurray studied ways of manipulating the antioxidants' levels in wine.