With over 10,000 grape varieties monitoring authenticity, adulteration and fraud poses a serious challenge for the wine industry.
From composition to geographical origin we have developed innovative technologies and applications for wine authenticity testing.
Isotopic analyses of wine has become a widespread tool to evaluate the quality, authenticity and origin. This application note shows the ability and performance of the analysis of ethanol with combustion and with a high temperature carbon reduction technique in combination with a Thermo Scientific DELTA V Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometer (IRMS).
The measurement of the 18O/16O ratio of water is one of the most important applications of isotope ratio mass spectrometry. Demonstrated here is the analysis of natural waters, fruit juices, and wines to show the GasBench II can be used successfully for isotope studies.
18O and 2H isotope ratio analysis of aqueous solutions such as water, urine, blood plasma, wine, can be performed by a variety of different techniques: equilibration, chromium reduction and carbon reduction (also referred to as high temperature conversion or pyrolysis). The high temperature conversion (TC) method allows a direct isotope ratio analysis of both oxygen and hydrogen in continuous flow mode. It offers the analysis of two isotopes in five minutes from only one injection of water samples as small as 0.1 μL.
Investigation into the use of a spectro-electro array platform to generate metabolic patterns that can be interrogated using chemometric modeling software. This metabolomic approach is then used to differentiate wines and teas, and to study adulteration and the effects of geography on varietals using fruit juice as an example.
An LC-MS method to determine the molecular transformations and pathways that occur during the wine making process. Differential analysis of Grenache and Syrah unfiltered samples are demonstrated.
On the agenda of the recent UK Laboratory of the Government Chemist (LGC) meeting I attended was a fascinating talk titled: Wine Fraud – Catching the Cheats by renowned wine expert Geoff Taylor of Campden BRI. Although Geoff’s does not discuss Ion Chromatography, his abstract has some startling facts where fraud could potentially make serious money for the criminals, ranging from the fine wine market where volume is low and unit prices are high through to the mass volume market.
Researching for a nice bottle of wine to take to a party, I did what many of us do and performed an internet search. High on the results and distracting me from my task was the following story: World’s most expensive wine goes on sale on a bottle of wine selling for an eye-watering USD $195,000. I then wondered, ever the analytical chemist, how do they know it’s the real thing and could these buyers benefit from an isotope ratio mass spectrometer (IRMS) of the bottles of wine in their cellar!
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