Shining a light on the issue of wine fraud
University of Adelaide
University of Adelaide wine researchers are developing a fast and simple method of authenticating wine -- a potential solution against the estimated billions of dollars' worth of wine fraud globally, but also offering a possible means of building regional branding.
The
team of scientists were able to identify the geographical origins of wines
originating from three wine regions of Australia and from Bordeaux in France
with 100% accuracy with a novel technique of molecular fingerprinting using
'fluorescence spectroscopy', a technology that analyses fluorescence of
molecules.
"Wine
fraud is a significant problem for the global wine industry, given a yearly
economic impact within Australia alone estimated at several hundred million
dollars, and globally thought to be in the billions of dollars," says
Ruchira Ranaweera, PhD student in the University's Waite Research Institute,
who conducted the research.
"Wine
authentication can help to avoid any uncertainty around wine labeling according
to origin, variety, or vintage. The application of a relatively simple
technique like this could be adapted for use in the supply chain as a robust
method for authentication or detection of adulterated wines."
The researchers looked at Cabernet Sauvignon -- a globally important grape variety and the second most planted in Australia -- from three different wine regions of Australia and Bordeaux in France, the birthplace of Cabernet Sauvignon.
The
research has been published in the journal Food Chemistry and
was supported by Wine Australia and the Australian Government, the Waite
Research Institute and industry partners through the ARC Training Centre for
Innovative Wine Production.
The
researchers compared an existing approach for authentication, which involves
measuring elements in wine samples using 'inductively coupled plasma-mass
spectrometry' (ICP-MS), with the more simple, rapid and cost-effective
fluorescence spectroscopy technique.
"This
method provides a 'fingerprint' of the samples according to the presence of
fluorophoric or light-emitting compounds," says Ms Ranaweera. "When
used in combination with a robust data analysis using a particular machine
learning algorithm, it is proving to be a powerful technique for
authentication."
In
every wine they tested using the novel combination of fluorescence spectroscopy
with machine learning-driven data analysis, they were able to correctly
allocate the wine to region with the fluorescence data but not with elements
determined by ICP-MS.
There
are other useful applications of this technology for the wine industry that are
available now or in the pipeline, such as phenolic and wine colour analysis,
and smoke taint detection.
Project
leader Associate Professor David Jeffery, from the Waite Research Institute and
the ARC Training Centre for Innovative Wine Production, says they hope
ultimately to identify specific chemical markers that help discriminate between
wine regions.
"Other
than coming up with a robust method for authenticity testing, we are hoping to
use the chemical information obtained from fluorescence data to identify the
molecules that are differentiating the wines from the different regions,"
Associate Professor Jeffery says.
"This
may help with regional branding, by understanding how their wines'
characteristics are influenced by the region and how they differ from other
regions."