## 4 Conclusions  
Inadequate acidity in grape berries due to climate warming is of increasing concerns for winemaking, and homofermatative LP shows potential to address this issue. This work describes comprehensive characterisation of using an indigenous LP strain to induce biological acidification with two inoculation regimes at pilot-scale vinication. Both LP inoculation strategies yielded considerable amount of lactic acid, which in turn led to increased tittatable acidity in Cabernet Sauvignon wines. Further, the addition of LP prior to or simultaneously with SC had little to no impact on the completion of alcoholic fermentation as well as fermentation duration compared to those of chemical acidification treatment. Beyond bio-acidification, LP induced multiple effects on wine volatile profile, in particular the remarkable increase in lactate-related esters. In line with the changes in wine composition, the sensory profile of the bio-acidified wines was shifted towards \"jammy fruit\" and \"butter\" notes with better mouthfeel benefited from improved wine acidity. Considering the overall impact on wine fermentation and flavour profile, reverse inoculation of LP was more effective compared to co-inoculation of LP. Although LP enabled enhanced wine acidity via lactic fermentation, the fact that LP also easily enabled MLF should be taken into account when using this tool to induce bio-acidification. Overall  
Figure 3: Sensory evaluation of the Cabernet Sauvignon wines obtained from four different fermentation modalities. * indicates perception of certain sensory attributes were significantly different between the four batches of wines. Numbers 0–9 indicates the intensity of each sensory attributes.  
effects on wine acidity resulting from combined lactic fermentation and MLF by LP depend on several factors, including inoculation timing. These findings invite further research on thoroughly investigating how the time lapse between LP and SC inoculations influence yeast-bacteria interactions, which ultimately modulates wine acidification and flavour.  
The following supporting information can be downloaded at: [[https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/foods11162511/s1](https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/foods11162511/s1)]([https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/foods11162511/s1](https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/foods11162511/s1)), Table S1: Physico-chemical parameters of the Cabernet Sauvignon grape must. Table S2: Qualitative information about the analysed volatile compounds in Cabernet Sauvignon wines.  
Conceptualization, Y.L. and D.Y.; investigation, W.Z. and J.J.; formal analysis, [PERSON] and W.Z.; data curation, [PERSON] and J.J.; writing--original draft preparation, [PERSON]; writing--review and editing, J.J., Y.L., D.Y., Y.Q., Y.S., X.Y., X.S. and Y.W.; software, J.J.; visualization, J.J.; funding acquisition, J.J. and Y.L. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This research was funded by the National Natural Science Key Foundation of China (U21A20269); Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region Key R&D project (2022 BBF02015); the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2452018118); the Natural Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province (2021)Q-136); and the China Agriculture Research System (CARS-29-jg-03).  
Data is contained within the article or Supplementary Materials.  
The authors declare no conflict of interest.