Comparison on phenolic compounds in Vitis vinifera cv. Cabernet Sauvignon wines from five wine-growing regions in China

Phenolic compounds in the non-aged “Cabernet Sauvignon” wines from five wine-growing regions in China were investigated using HPLC-MS. The wines from the regions that have similar “terroir” characteristics showed a shorter clustering distance, indicating that similar phenol profiling was present between wines from the Helan mountain of Ningxia and Qilian of Gansu, the drier areas in Northwest China, and between wines from Changli of Hebei and Yantai of Shandong, the wetter areas in Eastern China. Phenol profiling in wines from Deqin of Yunnan (YNDQ), a plateau valley zone in Southwest China, was significantly different with other regions. The YNDQ wines contained extremely high contents of cyanidin derivatives and quercetin derivatives, but had extremely low content of epicatechin. It is suggested that “terroir” characteristics affected the carbon flow to specific branch pathways in the flavonoid metabolism of grape berries, eventually leading to differences in the phenol profiling in the regional wines.