Iron-gall inks have been described as complexes of iron ions with gallic or tannic acids, available in gall extracts. To assess this working hypothesis, we have prepared medieval inks using ingredients and methods appropriate to the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. The five historical inks studied were selected based upon research into Iberian written sources of medieval techniques. Results are supported by comparison with iron complexes with a well-characterized phenol counterpart: gallic, ellagic, and tannic acids as well as digalloyl and pentagalloyl glucose; as either precipitates or prepared as inks by adding gum arabic. Raman and infrared spectroscopies show that medieval writing inks could not have been represented solely by iron complexes with gallic acid. Overall, writing inks display the infrared signature of gallotannins, indicating that complexes of Fe 3+-polygalloyl esters of glucose are also formed. Our results also show that the commercial tannic acid solution is far more complex than the gall extracts, and cannot be used to represent a gall extract (as described in historic written sources). High-performance liquid chromatographyelectrospray ionisation, HPLC-ESI-MS, reveals that the concentration of gallic acid varies in the gall extracts, depending on the extraction method and ink recipe. Importantly, in certain recipes, gallic acid is found as a minor compound, when compared with the galloyl esters of glucose.

In the present work, several compounds bearing similar spectroscopic features were found to occur in aged Port wines and respective sediments (lees). The data obtained revealed two new families of compounds with unique spectroscopic characteristics, displaying a wavelength of the maximum absorption at high wavelength in the visible spectrum at approximately 730 and approximately 680 nm. The structure of these pigments was elucidated by liquid chromatography/diode array detector-mass spectrometry (LC/DAD-MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and their formation pathway in wines was established. Their structure is constituted by two pyranoanthocyanin moieties linked together through a methyne bridge. This new family of compounds displays an attractive and rare turquoise blue color at acidic conditions and has never been reported in the literature.

The copigmentation binding constants (K) for the interaction of different copigments with oenin (major red wine anthocyanin) were determined. All tests were performed in a 12% ethanol citrate buffer solution (0.2 M) at pH 3.5, with an ionic strength adjusted to 0.5 M by the addition of sodium chloride. Over the past years, several copigmentation studies were made and many copigments were tested, but none of them included prodelphinidin B3 or a dimeric-type adduct like oenin-(O)-catechin, probably due to the difficulty in obtaining them. The data yielded from this study allowed concluding that (a) the presence of a pyrogallol group in the B ring of the flavan-3-ol structure slightly increases the copimentation potential and (b) within all copigments tested oenin-(O)-catechin was revealed to be the best. According to computational studies performed on epicatechin/oenin, epigallocatechin/oenin, procyanidin B3/oenin, and oenin-(O)-catechin/oenin complexes, the ΔGbinding energy of the oenin-(O)-catechin/oenin complex is the most negative compared to the other copigmentation complexes, hence being more stable and thermodynamically favored. All structural data show that oenin-(O)-catechin and epigallocatechin are closer to the pigment molecule, which is in accordance with these two copigments having the highest experimental copigmentation binding constants for oenin.

Catechin-(4,8)-malvidin-3-glucoside, a red pigment adduct (at acid pH) found in red wine and resulting from the reaction between malvidin-3-glucoside and flavan-3-ols during wine aging, was synthesized. The thermodynamic and kinetic constants of the network of chemical reactions were fully determined by stopped flow: (i) Direct pH jumps, from thermal equilibrated solutions at pH = 1.0 (flavylium cation, AH(+)), show three kinetic processes. The first one occurs within the mixing time of the stopped flow and leads to the formation of quinoidal bases A and/or A(-) depending on the final pH; the second one takes place with a rate constant equal to 0.075 + 33[H(+)] and was attributed to the hydration reaction that forms the pseudobases (hemiketals), B/B(-). The third process is much slower, 2 × 10(-4) s(-1), and is due to the cis-trans isomerization giving rise to a small fraction of trans-chalcones, Ct/Ct(-). (ii) Reverse pH jumps from the thermally equilibrated solution at moderate to neutral pH values back to a sufficiently acidic medium clearly distinguish three kinetic processes: the first one takes place within the dead time and is due to the protonation of the bases; the second process occurs with the same rate constant of the hydration reaction monitored by direct pH jumps and is attributed to the formation of flavylium cation from the B; the last process occurs with a rate constant of 1.8 s(-1), and results from the formation of AH(+) from Ct through B, reflecting the rate of the ring closure (tautomerization). The separation of the hydration from the tautomerization upon a reverse pH jump is only possible because at pH < 1 the former reaction is faster than the last. An identical situation was observed for malvidin-3-glucoside (oenin) for pH < 2.