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L-Malic Acid

Sale price$15.00

Sample Type: Juice, Must, & Wine

Units: g/L

Sample Volume: 50 mLs

Methodology: FTIR Spectroscopy

L-Malic acid is the most sour organic acid in wine that is most commonly associated to the sharp green acidity of an apple (Amerine et al. 1965). It is highly abundant before veraison and rapidly broken down during ripening through biological mechanisms that accelerate with increasingly warm temperatures (Sweetman et al., 2009, Lakso & Kliewer, 1975). Its quantity in must prior to fermentation is useful for calculating acid additions because malolactic fermentation naturally deacidifies wine’s titratable acidity 0.56 g/L for each gram of malic acid in the unfermented must. The end of malolactic fermentation is generally characterized below concentrations of 0.1 g/L, but some winemakers may seek values less than 0.05 g/L (AWRI, 2020). 

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References:

Amerine, M. A., Roessler, E. B., & Ough, C. S. (1965). Acids and the Acid Taste. I. The Effect of pH and Titratable Acidity. American Journal of Enology and Viticulture, 16(1), 29–37. https://doi.org/10.5344/ajev.1965.16.1.29

Sweetman, C., Deluc, L. G., Cramer, G. R., Ford, C. M., & Soole, K. L. (2009). Regulation of malate metabolism in grape berry and other developing fruits. Phytochemistry, 70(11–12), 1329–1344. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.phytochem.2009.08.006

Lakso, A. N., & Kliewer, W. M. (1975). The Influence of Temperature on Malic Acid Metabolism in Grape Berries: I. Enzyme Responses. Plant Physiology, 56(3), 370–372. https://doi.org/10.1104/pp.56.3.370

Hewitt, S., Hernández-Montes, E., Dhingra, A., & Keller, M. (2023). Impact of heat stress, water stress, and their combined effects on the metabolism and transcriptome of grape berries. Scientific Reports, 13(1), 9907. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-36160-x

Achieving Successful Malolactic Fermentation. (2020). AWRI. https://www.awri.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Malolactic-fermentation.pdf.

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