It's time to pop a cork on champagne's proteome!

Champagne is a world-renowned French sparkling wine, which undergoes many steps (fermentation, aging …) for its elaboration. Various compounds might evolve during this winemaking process and thus modify its final quality. Here, we report the first proteome analysis of two standard commercial Champagne wines, using the powerful Combinatorial Peptide Ligand Library (CPLL) technique. Indeed, wine proteins are present in small amounts but they are key compounds, likely to impact on both foam quality and aroma behavior. Forty-three unique gene products were retrieved in a single-varietal champagne and a blended champagne. Several proteins from Vitis vinifera together with seven yeast proteins were undoubtedly identified in these Champagne wines.

The main advantage of CPLLs was the detection of low abundance proteins despite the absence of purification or pre-concentration step. It is an important fact to take into account, since Champagne wines generally contain a low amount of proteins (5-10mg/L) that implies to usually concentrate wine proteins before 1D or 2D electrophoresis. Most Champagne proteins are grape and yeast glycoproteins which are considered as good foam "promoters". Some of these proteins might also interact with wine aromas, and thus contribute to the overall quality of Champagne wines. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Proteomics of non-model organisms.