On the 21st and 22nd June, the Emina Ribera Winery, headquarters of Grupo Matarromera, will be holding a Summer School where they will discuss the polyphenols present in wine, its healthy and technological qualities as well as its commercial application in the framework of the WineSense project.

 

In addition to the Matarromera Winery experts, the programme will include visits from renowned figures in the world of research, such as María Victoria Moreno, Scientific Researcher at the CSIC [Spanish National Research Council]; Celestino Santos, Professor of Nutrition and Bromatology at the University of Salamanca’s Faculty of Pharmacy; and María Jose Cocero, Director of the University of Valladolid’s High Pressure Process Group, who isalso project leader.

 

This project interrelates academic sector research with industrial application. WineSense is being financed by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme, specifically by the “Industry-Academia Partnerships and Pathways” (IAPP) programme, part of the Marie-Curie Actions.

 

The project is led by the University of Valladolid (UVA) and is partnered with the Institute of Experimental and Technological Biology of Portugal (IBET), the Dutch company Feyecon, who work in the technology of CO2, and the Matarromera Winery. It promotes the transfer of knowledge and collaboration through the mutual exchange of researchers and has a total investment of €950,000.

 

WineSense Project

 

The WineSense project, launched in October 2013 and will run until September of this year, proposes the use of by-products of the fermentation process by extracting their polyphenols through a combination of new techniques formed for this purpose.

 

The main objective is improving the extraction process to obtain most of the polyphenols present in the grapes and to find an appropriate formulation for its application in the pharmaceutical, cosmetic and food sectors. This will be done using solvent-free microwave extraction (SFME), microwave-assisted extraction (MAE) and emulsion formulation techniques that combine high pressure and anti-solvent effects. In addition, the marketing possibilities of both the finished products and the developed processes will be assessed.

 

Among the eleven academic and industrial researchers who participated in an exchange was a researcher from Matarromera, who was transferred to the University of Valladolid for five months (from March to July 2015) to research the purification and fractionation of Eminol®, the Polyphenolic grape extract created by Matarromera.