Rapid wine authentication via cyclic cataluminescence method based on mercaptans

The quality characteristics of wine were strongly influenced by mercaptans, which were key flavor substances contributing to the characteristic aroma profile of wines. Although the wide usages of chromatography and mass spectrography in mercaptan analysis, the complex sample pretreatment and time-consuming analysis processes limited their application in rapid detection. In this work, the rapid sensing method of cyclic cataluminescence (CCTL) was extended to mercaptan analysis by introducing La₂O₃ as a catalyst, and a dynamic response strategy for wine discrimination was established. The La₂O₃ catalyst was synthesized by a simple hydrothermal method and possessed a layered structure and exhibited excellent catalytic activity toward the luminescence reaction of mercaptan substances. The characteristic attenuation coefficient (k) was derived by fitting the decay of peak intensity of the CCTL curve over time. The obtained k values were found to depend on both the concentration and composition of the composite sample. The CCTL method was successfully applied to 55 wine samples, including 12 different wine brands from various production areas. Each wine brand exhibited a characteristic k value, while the same brand showed high consistency. Furthermore, when combined with linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), the method achieved 100% classification accuracy, demonstrating its great potential for rapid, reliable, and cost-effective wine authentication.