SummaryAlcohol is fundamental to the character of wine, yet too much can put a wine off‐balance. A wine is regarded to be well balanced if its alcoholic strength, acidity, sweetness, fruitiness and tannin structure complement each other so that no single component dominates on the palate. Balancing a wine's positive fruit flavours with the optimal absolute and relative concentration of alcohol can be surprisingly difficult. Over the past three decades, consumers have increasingly demanded wine with richer and riper fruit flavour profiles. In response, grape and wine producers have extended harvest times to increase grape maturity and enhance the degree of fruit flavours and colour intensity. However, a higher degree of grape maturity results in increased grape sugar concentration, which in turn results in wines with elevated alcohol concentration. On average, the alcohol strength of red wines from many warm wine‐producing regions globally rose by about 2% (v/v) during this period. Notwithstanding that many of these ‘full‐bodied, fruit‐forward’ wines are well balanced and sought after, there is also a significant consumer market segment that seeks lighter styles with less ethanol‐derived ‘hotness’ on the palate. Consumer‐focussed wine producers are developing and implementing several strategies in the vineyard and winery to reduce the alcohol concentration in wines produced from well‐ripened grapes. In this context, Saccharomyces cerevisiae wine yeasts have proven to be a pivotal strategy to reduce ethanol formation during the fermentation of grape musts with high sugar content (> 240 g l−1). One of the approaches has been to develop ‘low‐alcohol’ yeast strains which work by redirecting their carbon metabolism away from ethanol production to other metabolites, such as glycerol. This article reviews the current challenges of producing glycerol at the expense of ethanol. It also casts new light on yeast strain development programmes which, bolstered by synthetic genomics, could potentially overcome these challenges.

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Yeast-especially Saccharomyces cerevisiae-have long been a preferred workhorse for the production of numerous recombinant proteins and other metabolites. S. cerevisiae is a noteworthy aroma compound producer and has also been exploited to produce foreign bioflavour compounds. In the past few years, important strides have been made in unlocking the key elements in the biochemical pathways involved in the production of many aroma compounds. The expression of these biochemical pathways in yeast often involves the manipulation of the host strain to direct the flux towards certain precursors needed for the production of the given aroma compound. This review highlights recent advances in the bioengineering of yeast-including S. cerevisiae-to produce aroma compounds and bioflavours. To capitalise on recent advances in synthetic yeast genomics, this review presents yeast as a significant producer of bioflavours in a fresh context and proposes new directions for combining engineering and biology principles to improve the yield of targeted aroma compounds.

Conversion of cellulose, hemicellulose or starch to ethanol via a biological route requires enzymatic conversion of these substrates to monosaccharides that can be assimilated by a fermenting organism. Consolidation of these events in a single processing step via a cellulolytic or amylolytic microorganism(s) is a promising approach to low-cost production of fuels and chemicals. One strategy for developing a microorganism capable of such consolidated bioprocessing (CBP) involves engineering Saccharomyces cerevisiae to expresses a heterologous enzyme system enabling (hemi)cellulose or starch utilization. The fundamental principle behind consolidated bioprocessing as a microbial phenomenon has been established through the successful expression of the major (hemi)cellulolytic and amylolytic activities in S. cerevisiae. Various strains of S. cerevisiae were subsequently enabled to grow on cellobiose, amorphous and crystalline cellulose, xylan and various forms of starch through the combined expression of these activities. Furthermore, host cell engineering and adaptive evolution have yielded strains with higher levels of secreted enzymes and greater resistance to fermentation inhibitors. These breakthroughs bring the application of CBP at commercial scale ever closer. This mini-review discusses the current status of different aspects related to the engineering of S. cerevisiae for next generation ethanol production.