Demi Perry

Overview

The Perry Lab is an enology-focused lab dedicated to advancing the quality, sustainability, and resilience of the Virginia wine industry through cutting-edge research, analytical expertise, and interdisciplinary partnerships. My lab seeks to address the evolving challenges faced by winemakers and grape growers across the Commonwealth by integrating enological innovation with viticultural and plant pathology expertise through research conducted in collaboration with Dr. Drew Harner and Dr. Mizuho Nita. This holistic approach allows us to approach Virginia’s grape and wine challenges from vineyard to bottle, exploring the complex interactions between vine health, fruit quality, and wine expression in the face of regional pressures such as climate variability, disease, and pest threats.

A central focus of the lab is to provide analytical services and know-how that support collaborations across the region, including volatile and aroma analysis to help winemakers better understand and shape the sensory profiles of their wines. Through these services, we aim to bridge research and industry applications, offering insights that support both experimental and commercial wine production.

Research

Key areas of investigation include:

• Fermentations from vineyard variety trials, to evaluate the winemaking potential of new or underutilized grape varieties under Virginia growing conditions
• Enological impacts of the spotted lanternfly, a growing threat to regional vineyards, to better understand how vine stress may affect fermentation dynamics and wine quality
• Exploration of non-Saccharomyces yeast fermentations, expanding the winemaker’s toolbox for managing difficult fermentations and enhancing expression of desirable grape and yeast-derived aroma and flavor compounds