Grape and wine analysis – enhancing the power of spectroscopy with chemometrics. A review of some applications in the australian wine industry

Spectroscopic techniques offer the potential to simplify and reduce analytical times for a range of grape and wine analytes. It is this aspect, together with the ability to simultaneously measure several analytes, which was the impetus for developing spectroscopic methods. The Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI) has long used spectroscopic analysis of wines in the ultraviolet (UV) and visible (Vis) wavelengths, and since 1998 has been investigating applications of spectroscopic techniques in the near infrared (NIR) and mid-infrared (MIR) wavelength regions of the electromagnetic spectrum for the rapid analysis and quality control of both grapes and wine by the Australian wine industry. This paper reviews the use of several spectroscopic techniques, including NIR, MIR, and Vis, combined with chemometrics, to assess grape and wine composition in the Australian wine industry. The achievements, current research, and proposed further applications of different spectroscopic techniques are discussed in studies into the assessments of red grape composition and of fungal diseases in grapes, monitoring phenolic compounds during red wine fermentations, quality grading of red, white and fortified wine styles, monitoring wine distillation processes, and yeast strain classification. Extract from “AWRI Advances in Wine Science” (2005). Edited by R.J. Blair, M.E. Francis and I.S. Pretorius.