Evidence for S. cerevisiae Fermentation in Ancient Wine

Abstract. Saccharomyces cerevisiae is the principal yeast used in modern fermentation processes, in-cluding winemaking, breadmaking, and brewing. From residue present inside one of the earliest known wine jars from Egypt, we have extracted, amplified, and sequenced ribosomal DNA from S. cerevisiae. These results indicate that this organism was proba-bly responsible for wine fermentation by at least 3150 B.C. This inference has major implications for the evolution of bread and beer yeasts, since it suggests that S. cerevisiae yeast, which occurs naturally on the surface bloom of grapes, was also used as an inocu-lum to ferment cereal products