The alcohol content of wine is creeping upward from about 12% to beyond 15%, a trend that oenophiles see as compromising quality and that has public health officials worrying more than ever about alcoholism. However, microbiology might provide a means for better controlling the ethanol genie within the bottle, so to speak, by substituting high-yielding wine yeasts with non-Saccharomyces varieties for a first-round fermentation, according to Cristian Varela of the Australian Wine Research Institute, Adelaide, South Australia, and his collaborators. Details appeared on 27 December 2013 ahead of print in Applied and Environmental Microbiology (doi: 10.1128/AEM.03780-13).