Fermentation is a stage in winemaking that produces ethanol and carbon dioxide from the sugars present in the must through the action of yeasts. As a result of this process, wine lees are formed at the bottom of the tanks, accounting for 25% of all winemaking by-products. Wine lees contain a significant concentration of bioactive compounds with high antioxidant activity. Drying techniques have been evaluated in wine lees to preserve these compounds and enable their use in food products. This study aimed to determine the total phenolic content in alcoholic wine lees dried in an oven at 40°C and freeze-dried. Antioxidant activity analyses were also conducted using the DPPH free radical method. Absorbance readings were taken using a spectrophotometer at 765 nm and 517 nm wavelengths, respectively. The data were statistically analyzed using Tukey’s test to identify significant differences between the means (p < 0.05). Oven-dried alcoholic wine lees had a lower total phenolic content than freeze-dried ones (59.67 and 77.92 mg GAE/g, respectively). Freeze-drying, which occurs at low temperatures, can preserve the thermosensitive compounds in the samples and maintain a higher concentration of phenolic compounds. The antioxidant activity, calculated by EC50, was higher for the oven-dried samples than for the freeze-dried ones (0.11 and 0.13 mg/mL,

respectively). Thermal drying methods can lead to the formation of new compounds, increasing the antioxidant capacity of the sample. Therefore, it can be concluded that although freeze-drying favors the concentration of total phenolics, oven-drying enhances the antioxidant activity of wine lees and is a less expensive technique.