Grant: Engage Grants Program

Summary:*Scheuermann Vineyard and Winery located in Westport, ON is commercially producing wine from their own grapes planted in just over 6 acres. Crushing and pressing of grapes produces two kinds of waste - pomace which is dry residue of stems, skins and seeds and lees- a wet sediment from wine processing. While pomace is easily recycled as vineyard fertilizer lees is a challenge for the company. Lees cannot be flushed into soil or water bodies due to its organic matter and acidity. Scheuermann planned to develop value-added products from their wine lees for food purposes, but were faced with challenging problems with the processing of lees due to lack of technical know-hows to solve this problem. Scheuermann turned to our lab for a partnership as we have an extensive expertise on developing value-added products from agri-food by-products and waste. To solve the above problem, we will use a potentially innovative approach (using existing as they have all required infrastructures) to develop a new lees-based salad dressing containing polyphenols and other nutrients (minerals, vitamins) that are naturally present in the lees. Two techniques will be used a) ultrasound (US) as stabilizer and non-thermal co-pasteurization and b) solar (sun) energy/Solar irradiation (SI) to stabilize colour, appearance and sensory properties of the salad dressing. Ultrasound (US), US-Supercritical-CO2 (US-SC-CO2), high performance chromatography (HPLC) and mass spectrometry (MS) will be applied to characterize compounds of interests (mainly polyphenolics from lees). At the end of this project, Scheuermann will have an established protocol in place to produce lees-based vinegar.*