According to a new study, leaves, flowers and flowers from Merlot grapevines harbor bacterial taxa present in the surrounding soil.

The findings could help to analyze how microbes affect a wine's properties and pave the way for biotechnological advances for producing hardier crops.

The study was carried out on Merlot vines growing in five different vineyards in the North Fork of Long Island.

A team of researchers including Jack Gilbert, a microbial ecologist at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois examined samples of soil, roots, leaves, flowers and grape throughout the growing season. They indentified all the bacterial species were and sequenced their genes.

The New York microbiome was then compared to Merlot from both Bordeaux and California. All three showed similar bacterial species. They found that majority of bacterial species found in the plant it were also present in the soil. This indicated that the soil acts as a reservoir for the bacteria.

Dr Paul Chambers, a researcher in bioscience at the Australian Wine Research Institute, said "If a viticulturist can shape the style of wine in a controlled manner by managing the microbiome of her or his vineyard in a targeted way, it opens the way for winemakers to more effectively shape their wines to meet market demands".

According to Gilbert, terroir comes from the plant's physiology, the chemical nature of the grapes. The fermenting work is done by the yeast. He added that we still don't know whether bacteria are specifically contributing to terroir. However, their next step is to discover how those bacteria affect the chemistry of the plant.

The study was published on March 24 in the online journal for the American Society for Microbiology.