Background: To obtain wines with a lower percentage of alcohol, the simplest approach would be an earlier harvest of the grapes. However, this has implications for the wine composition and quality, due to the lack of phenolic maturity that these grapes may present. A technological innovation that could help in this situation could be the use of ultrasound in wineries. Methods: Grapes were harvested with two different ripening levels (25.4 °Brix and 29 °Brix), transported to the winery, and vinified. Also, a large-scale high-power ultrasound system was used to treat part of the less mature grapes just after crushing. These grapes were also vinified. The three different vinifications were skin-macerated for 7 days. The wine aroma compounds and physicochemical, chromatic, and sensory characteristics were analyzed at the time of bottling. Results: The wine made with the ultrasound-treated grapes showed very similar characteristics to the wine made with the more mature grapes, especially regarding total phenol and tannin content, but with an alcohol content 15% lower than the latter. Conclusions: The results indicate that this technology could be applied to grapes to favor the extraction of grape phenolic compounds, even when grape phenolic maturity is not complete, allowing the production of quality wines with a reduced alcohol content.

中文翻译：

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减少红酒中酒精含量的新方法：使用大功率超声波。

背景：要获得酒精度较低的葡萄酒，最简单的方法是提早收获葡萄。但是，由于这些葡萄可能缺乏酚类成熟度，因此对葡萄酒的成分和品质有影响。在这种情况下可能会有所帮助的一项技术创新可能是在酿酒厂中使用超声波。方法：以两种不同的成熟水平（25.4°Brix和29°Brix）收获葡萄，运输到酿酒厂并进行酿酒。同样，在粉碎后，使用了大型的高功率超声系统来处理部分较不成熟的葡萄。这些葡萄也被酿造了。将三种不同的酿造物浸软了7天。装瓶时分析了葡萄酒的香气成分以及理化，色泽和感官特征。结果：用超声波处理过的葡萄制成的葡萄酒与用较成熟的葡萄制成的葡萄酒具有非常相似的特性，特别是在总酚和单宁含量方面，但酒精含量比后者低15％。结论：结果表明，即使葡萄酚的成熟度不完全，该技术也可用于葡萄，以促进葡萄酚类化合物的提取，从而可以生产出酒精含量降低的优质葡萄酒。