Urea formation in wine is dependent on numerous factors with the yeast strain used for fermentation having a major impact (Schehl et al., 2007). The quantity of urea formed in local wines by the various commercial wine yeast strains is not generally known. This makes it difficult to evaluate new experimental yeast strains generated by the ARC Infruitec-Nietvoorbij’s (ARC Inf-Nvb) yeast development programme. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate residual urea in wines following small-scale vinification by experimental wine yeast strains compared to a selection of commercial strains used by the South African wine industry.