Several years ago when I visited Scotch Block Winery, I had a chat with their Winemaker Fred Bulbeck. Based on some things we talked about, I came up with this recipe for Blackcurrant Wine. If you look at the recipe, it calls for two different yeast strains, EC1118 AND D254.

That blackcurrant wine turned out absolutely incredible. I wrote about it here. I regretted that I had made only 3 gallons of it.

I mentioned to some that I had co-inoculated the juice with two different strains of yeast and there were some funny looks. I’m no expert on yeasts, but it turns out that there is evidence to show that using two different strains of yeast when making wine can produce benefits that aren’t available when using only a single strain of yeast.

The Australian Wine Research Institute conducted a study on the use of co-inoculation on a Sauvignon blanc variety. Their conclusion:

“Co-inoculations, using both VIN7/QA23 and the Anchor Alchemy yeast combinations, have enhanced chemical and sensorial aroma profiles when compared to single yeast strain fermented wines and blends of the latter single yeast strain fermentation wines. This phenomenon is most likely due to metabolic interactions between wine yeasts (Howell et al., 2006). At the moment very little information is available about the metabolic interaction of various wine yeasts during fermentation. Researchers at the AWRI are currently involved in generating more information about possible yeast-yeast interactions during wine fermentation.”

The study was published in WineLand Magazine and reproduced for the Internet here.