Spectroscopic interferences in Fourier transform infrared wine analysis

Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometry has brought many advantages to wine analysis, such as fast analysis and good precision and accuracy for a great number of parameters. This technology has to be cautiously applied, therefore the need for analytical validation. Recovery results of several current wine control parameters using a FTIR wine analyser were determined. Good results were obtained for ethanol (addition of ethanol), total acid (addition of tartaric acid), total sugars in sweet wines (addition of glucose) and sulfate (addition of sulfuric acid). On the contrary, worse results were obtained for total acid (addition of acetic and sulfuric acids), volatile acid (addition of acetic acid) and total sugars in dry wines (addition of glucose). These findings can be explained by spectroscopic interferences that were also a subject of analysis in this work. In fact, ethanol, organic acids and other compounds, present in high concentrations in wine, can produce major interferences in the analysis for compounds such as volatile acid and sugars in dry wines, when their strong infrared absorption bands do not differ significantly from other abundant compounds.