NMR spectroscopy in wine authentication: An official control perspective.

Area of Science:

• Analytical Chemistry
• Food Science
• Spectroscopy

Background:

• Wine authentication is crucial for detecting fraud and ensuring product integrity.
• Traditional methods include wet chemistry, chromatography, mass spectrometry, and optical spectroscopy.
• Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, particularly Deuterium NMR (²H NMR), has been established for wine analysis.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review the applications, possibilities, and limitations of Proton NMR (¹H NMR) spectroscopy in analytical wine authentication.
• To examine commercial and open-source solutions combining NMR spectroscopy and chemometrics for wine analysis.
• To assess the potential of ¹H NMR spectroscopy to become an official method for wine authentication.

Main Methods:

• Review of literature on ¹H NMR spectroscopy applications in wine analysis.
• Analysis of targeted quantitative determination of wine ingredients using ¹H NMR.
• Examination of nontargeted metabolomic fingerprinting of wine samples via ¹H NMR.
• Evaluation of chemometric approaches combined with NMR spectroscopy.

Main Results:

• ¹H NMR spectroscopy is a simpler and faster alternative to traditional methods, requiring less sample preparation.
• The technique enables both targeted quantification of wine components and untargeted metabolomic profiling.
• Several commercial and open-source solutions integrating ¹H NMR and chemometrics are available.
• Despite its advantages, ¹H NMR spectroscopy currently lacks official recognition.

Conclusions:

• ¹H NMR spectroscopy presents significant potential for robust and efficient wine authentication.
• Its capabilities in targeted and untargeted analysis, combined with chemometrics, offer a powerful tool against wine fraud.
• Further development and validation could lead to its official adoption as a standard analytical method.