Comparison of near infrared and mid infrared spectroscopy to discriminate between wines produced by different Oenococcus Oeni strains after malolactic fermentation: A feasibility study

The wine industry requires rapid, comprehensive methods and techniques to answer the new challenges driven by the market demands. Recent advances in spectroscopy technologies have brought about a revolution in the manner in which biological systems are visualised and analysed. The measurement of numerous small molecules (metabolites) metabolised by microorganisms during growth in wine, will benefit from techniques that require minimal sample preparation, permit the automatic analysis of many samples with negligible reagent costs, allow their rapid characterization against a stable database, and are easy to use. With recent developments in analytical instrumentation, these requirements are being fulfilled by vibrational spectroscopic methods, often referred to as “whole-organism fingerprinting” and more recently “metabolic fingerprinting”. The objective of this study was to evaluate and compare the use of near (NIR) and mid infrared (MIR) spectroscopy as rapid methods to distinguish red and white wines obtained by using different strains of Oenococcus oeni following malolactic fermentation. Using NIR and MIR wines produced with different O. oeni strains could be distinguished both in red and white wines yielding correct classification rates between 67 and 100% depending on the strain.