Candida zemplinina sp. nov., an osmotolerant and psychrotolerant yeast that ferments sweet botrytized wines.

Four yeast strains isolated from fermenting botrytized grape musts in the Tokaj wine region of Hungary are shown to represent a new osmotolerant and psychrotolerant species. The new species, Candida zemplinina (type strain 10-372(T)=CBS 9494(T)=NCAIM Y016667(T)), is closely related to Candida stellata, a yeast common on overripe grapes and in sweet fermenting wines. The sequence of the D1/D2 domain of the C. zemplinina 10-372(T) 26S rDNA shows 8.1 % sequence difference when compared to its counterpart in C. stellata CBS 157(T). In the conserved 5.8S gene of the ITS1-5.8S-ITS2 region the difference is 8 %. The D1/D2 domain differs only at two nucleotides from the homologous sequence of a yeast strain isolated from botrytized grapes in California, suggesting that C. zemplinina is a wine yeast that occurs in geographically distant localities.