Analytical pervaporation: a key technique in the enological laboratory

This paper reviews the use of analytical pervaporation (defined as the integration of 2 different analytical separation principles, evaporation and gas diffusion, in a single micromodule) coupled to flow-injection manifolds for the determination of analytes of interest in enology; the review discusses the advantages that these techniques can provide in wine analytical laboratories. Special attention is given to methods that enable the determination of either of 2 volatile analytes, or of one volatile analyte and one nonvolatile analyte by taking advantage of the versatility of the designed approaches. In a comparison of these methods with the official and/or standard methods, the results showed good agreement. In addition, the new methods offer improvements in linear determination range, quantitation limit, precision, rapidity, and potential for full automation. Thus, this review demonstrates that although the old technologies used in wine analytical laboratories may be supported by official and standard methods, they should be replaced by properly validated, new, and automated technologies.