Behavior of a hyperoxidized must during biological aging of Fino sherry wine

Hyperoxidation treatment of wine must is a technique that has been used increasingly in recent years to obtain white wines with greater stability against undesirable oxidation phenomena. In the case of the typical "Fino" sherry wines, the problem of browning suffered by the finished wine has been studied for many years. Hence, in this study, the objective is to assess the viability of hyperoxidation of the must of the Palomino Fine grape variety, which is used in the production of these wines, as a means of giving the wine greater resistance to browning while preserving the particular organoleptic characteristics derived from the biological aging of the wine under the flor yeast film. For this assessment, musts from four consecutive harvests were subjected to hyperoxidation, and the resulting wines were kept in an experimental solera under biological aging conditions. This experimental wine was then compared with a control wine obtained by traditional winemaking methods from the same four harvests. It was observed that during the aging period the experimental wine showed similar behavior to the control, its sensory characteristics improving over the course of the period of aging in solera, while showing a reduced tendency towards browning.