Phenolic Analysis and Theoretic Design for Chinese Commercial Wines' Authentication

To develop a robust tool for Chinese commercial wines' varietal, regional, and vintage authentication, phenolic compounds in 121 Chinese commercial dry red wines were detected and quantified by using high-performance liquid chromatography triple-quadrupole mass spectrometry (HPLC-QqQ-MS/MS), and differentiation abilities of principal component analysis (PCA), partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), and orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) were compared. Better than PCA and PLS-DA, OPLS-DA models used to differentiate wines according to their varieties (Cabernet Sauvignon or other varieties), regions (east or west Cabernet Sauvignon wines), and vintages (young or old Cabernet Sauvignon wines) were ideally established. The S-plot provided in OPLS-DA models showed the key phenolic compounds which were both statistically and biochemically significant in sample differentiation. Besides, the potential of the OPLS-DA models in deeper sample differentiating of more detailed regional and vintage information of wines was proved optimistic. On the basis of our results, a promising theoretic design for wine authentication was further proposed for the first time, which might be helpful in practical authentication of more commercial wines.