The Australian Wine Research Institute in Adelaide is expanding its yeast and bacteria library, used by winemakers to produce a particular train in a wine.
ABC News reports the institute stores thousands of samples, which microbiologist Eveline Bartowsky said winemakers use to source new traits, or store their strain.
"When you make wine you can have a commercial strain which is basically one that has been selected from different wines over the years," Bartowsky said. "So many wine makers have their own favourite strains which are often deposited in the AWRI collection. When vintage comes around they'll request it, they'll grow it up and use it in their own wine making."
Bartowsky said expanding the facility will allow for greater genetic diversity to benefit the industry.
"More than likely in the several thousand strains that we have, we may well have one strain that will have a particular characteristic," Bartowsky said. "There's been a lot of interest in wines that make less alcohol, so we may well have a strain that is able to produce less alcohol during the wine making process."