A Taste of Combat: How the Coevolution of Grapes and Yeast with Bacteria, Fungi, Insects, and Mammals Shaped the Traits of Wine

A Taste of Combat:  How the Coevolution of Grapes and Yeast with Bacteria, Fungi, Insects, and Mammals Shaped the Traits of Wine

Edmund Russell, University of Virginia

This paper will use the history of wine as a case study of evolutionary history (Russell, Evolutionary History, Cambridge, 2011).  It will begin by describing traits that connoisseurs value in wine—body (alcohol), sweetness, tannins, and acidity.  It will then describe the evolutionary advantages of these traits from the perspective of grapes and yeast—alcohol as yeast’s defense against other microorganisms, sweetness as a lure for seed dispersers, tannins as grape’s defense against microorganisms and seed predators, and acidity as grape’s defense against premature harvesting by fruit eaters.  It will show how people manipulated these traits by developing and spreading grape varieties, an example of anthropogenic evolution.  The importance of the case study is in showing that plants we consume developed their traits not just because people and plants coevolved, but because people capitalized on the coevolution of plants and fungi with non-human species, such as bacteria, fungi, insects, and other mammals.