HPTLC fingerprinting: A useful tool for white wines authentication

ABSTRACT

Although red wine is often used as a functional food because of its content in tannins, white wine is also an important source of biologically active compounds due to its phenolic compounds. The great variety of white wines available in the market led to the necessity to develop new analytical methods to assess their quality and authenticity. The aim of this study was to develop a method for authentication of white wines on the basis of HPTLC fingerprints. For this purpose three varieties of Romanian white wines (Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, and Feteasca Alba) produced in three different years in different vineyards were chosen. The obtained HPTLC fingerprints are useful for quality control of wines and allowed the differentiation of white wines in terms of their variety, their harvesting year and the vineyard. Also, the developed method has proved to be a useful tool for authentication of closely related white wines.

KEYWORDS:

• Authentication
• cluster analysis
• fingerprinting
• HPTLC
• quality control
• white wines