Preface

t was a great pleasure for me and all the members of the Organising and the Scientific Committees to arrange under the auspices of the UNESCO Chair « Culture et Traditions du Vin » the First International Conference on Wine Active Compounds.

Scientific interest in this research field is active and led to an increased understanding of wine molecules having biological roles and taste/ olfactory properties. The contributions gathered in this book will ensure the future of the research in the field and the future organization of this international conference.
The first section of this book focuses on the effects of wine micro-components having biological roles. Beside the well known antioxydative effect of the numerous polyphenols, there are potentialities for a nutritional preventive effect towards ageing and cancer process.

Wine odor/taste-active compounds have been the subject of intense research in recent years. The second session concerns the sensory and chemical characterization of these compounds and the impact of such compounds on consumer perception and preferences. Important contributions in this present book are related to the effect of wine processing and aging, including recent progress in the elucidation of the mechanisms involved in the interactions between wine active compounds and solid materials related to ageing in oak wood or yeast lees and bottles storage. This topic is discussed in section 3.

In this conference, a special section on the history of wine and of wine consumers was proposed and the last section of this book concerns a contribution on this field.

David Chassagne
Coordinator of WAC2008
Dijon, March 2008