Wine: Food of poets and scientists

Assessment of Physicochemical Properties of Tequila Brands: Authentication and Quality

“…Two of the spirituous beverages that have received a great deal of attention are white and red wines. A large amount of information exists in the literature with regard to their chemical and physicochemical properties, surely driven by historic issues and their widespread consumption worldwide [8][9][10][11]. For these spirituous beverages, it has been identified that the presence of polyphenols, tannins, phthalocyanines (as well as pH values), specific gravity, and alcohol content all contributes to their final character and organoleptic properties [8].…”

“…As was mentioned above, physicochemical properties of tequila are required for the design and construction of tequila production facilities and serve as a reliable information source to compare legal and adulterated products. Although there are several reports in the literature dealing with different topics concerning tequila production [26,27], raw materials [11,28], equipment [29,30], tequila constituents [31], metal content [18,32,33], and maturation [34], sufficient information still lacks concerning physicochemical properties, not only for tequila, but also for other Mexican spirituous beverages [34][35][36]. To fulfill these requirements, an investigation was performed to evaluate physicochemical properties of tequila, which are not established in the Mexican Official Standard 006, in different brands of tequila registered and not registered in the CRT.…”

Discrimination of Wine Attributes by Metabolome Analysis

“…The molecules present in a wine cover a large number of metabolites including primary (e.g., sugars, organic acids, amino acids) and secondary metabolites (e.g., flavonoids, anthocyanins, and other pigments). All of these compounds have a strong influence on the quality and character of the wine, and are therefore not only important for the characterization and differentiation of wines, but also for the detection of frauds. − The whole chemical composition of a wine reflects the history of the wine producing process, including the grape variety, the yeast strain, the containers used for fermentation and storage, and the enological practice. − …”

“…Variety, provenance, production year (vintage), and quality ratings, which are the most important attributes used for the characterization and description of wines should be reflected in the total composition of small molecules in the wine. Interestingly the largest part of previously performed studies focused either on a limited number of molecules to discriminate different wines derived from different cultivars or to predict the origin of the wine samples. – Only recently the first two studies emerged applying un-targeted approaches to evaluate the influence of the geographic origin and the species of oak wood on the quality of wines matured in oak barrels or to discriminate surface active compounds in champagne aerosols an champagne bulk . Both studies demonstrated that the restricted, targeted analysis of specific metabolites misses a large part of the molecular information pertained in the metabolome of a wine (or champagne wines), thus limiting its analytical significance.…”

“…[1][2][3][4] The whole chemical composition of a wine reflects the history of the wine producing process, including the grape variety, the yeast strain, the containers used for fermentation and storage, and the enological practice. [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] Variety, provenance, production year (vintage), and quality ratings, which are the most important attributes used for the characterization and description of wines should be reflected in the total composition of small molecules in the wine. Interestingly the largest part of previously performed studies focused either on a limited number of molecules to discriminate different wines derived from different cultivars or to predict the origin of the wine samples.…”