Classification and characterisation of Spanish red wines according to their appellation of origin based on chromatographic profiles and chemometric data analysis

Chromatographic profiles of wines have been used as a fingerprint for the discrimination of Spanish wines based on oenological practices. In order to extract information of different families of phenolic compounds, profiles of different UV–vis absorption wavelengths (280, 310, 370 and 520 nm) and fluorescence (ex = 260 nm; em = 360 nm) were analysed. A total of thirteen phenolic compounds which allowed the discrimination of wines of three different Spanish appellations (Penedes, Rioja and Ribera del Duero) were selected by means of principal component analysis (PCA). Afterwards, these compounds were used to build partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS1-DA and PLS2-DA) models which allowed the discrimination of wines according to their appellation with classification rates for independent test sets higher than 96% and 93% for PLS1-DA and PLS2-DA models respectively. Finally, characteristic compounds of each appellation were tentatively identified by means of liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC–MS) analysis. Thus, ten out of thirteen compounds (i.e., gallic acid for Penedes, trans-coumaroyltartaric and trans-caffeoyltartaric acids for Rioja and myricetin for Ribera del Duero wines) have been proposed.