A grape and wine chemodiversity comparison of different appellations in Burgundy: Vintage vs terroir effects

This study aimed at assessing the ability of high resolution Fourier Transform Ion Cyclotron Resonance – Mass Spectrometry (FTICR–MS) to differentiate grapes and corresponding wines from distinct vineyards managed by a same producer, according to complex chemical fingerprints. Grape extracts (at harvest) and corresponding wines from four different vineyards, sampled immediately after the alcoholic fermentation over three successive vintages, were analysed by FTICR–MS. Thousands of metabolites that are specific to a given vintage, or a given class (wine, skin or must) could be revealed, thus emphasising a strong vintage effect. The same wines were reanalyzed after a few years in bottle. Within the frame of this study, FTICR–MS along with multivariate statistical analyses could reveal significant terroir-discriminant families of metabolites from geographically close – though distinct – vineyards, but only after a few years of bottle ageing. It is supposed that the chemical composition of a wine holds memories of various environmental factors that have impacted its metabolic baggage at the moment of its elaboration. For the first time, such preliminary results indicate that non-targeted experiments can reveal such memories through terroir-related metabolic signatures of wines on a regional-scale that can potentially be as small as the countless “climats” of Burgundy.