Classification of Tempranillo wines according to geographic origin: combination of mass spectrometry based electronic nose and chemometrics.

Rapid methods employing instruments such as electronic noses (EN) or gas sensors are used in the food and beverage industries to monitor and assess the composition and quality of products. Similar to other food industries, the wine industry has a clear need for simple, rapid and cost effective techniques for objectively evaluating the quality of grapes, wine and spirits. In this study a mass spectrometry based electronic nose (MS-EN) instrument combined with chemometrics was used to predict the geographical origin of Tempranillo wines produced in Australia and Spain. The MS-EN data generated were analyzed using principal components analysis (PCA), partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) and stepwise linear discriminant analysis (SLDA) with full cross validation (leave-one-out method). The SLDA classified correctly 86% of the samples while PLS-DA 85% of Tempranillo wines according to their geographical origin. The relative benefits of using MS-EN will provide capability for rapid screening of wines. However, this technique does not provide the identification and quantitative determination of individual compounds responsible for the different aroma notes in the wine.