Various lactic acid bacteria isolated from wine and alcoholic drinks attempted to identified by restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP). Oenococcus oeni strains exhibited unique RFLP patterns by HaeIII-digestion of 12 reference strains. We performed RFLP analysis using the AccII or HaeIII enzyme for 44 strains isolated from red wine and the results indicated profiles identical to O. oeni type strain. O. oeni does not exhibit interspecific diversity. Thus, the use of RFLP analysis of 16S rDNA is useful in the identification of O. oeni strains isolated from wines.