Aging markers from bottled red wine aged with chips, staves and barrels

This paper shows the results of the experiments carried on Spanish red wines aged through alternative as well as traditional oak barrel systems, i.e., chips stainless steel tanks and staves stainless steel tanks, at the same time and under the same conditions. Wine aging through wood pieces is not accepted as an enological practice by the European Union and, in fact, it is considered a fraud. It is, then, of a great interest to identify those parameters able to establish the aging technique that had been used in a wine ready to be consumed. With this idea in mind, the development of the same wine has been studied while aging for 3 years in three different systems. During the first six aging months wines stored with staves obtained characteristics that were halfway between wines treated with chips and those aged in barrels. However, as wood contact period length increased so did the differences between wines stored in traditional and alternative systems (either with staves or chips). These differences grew during the bottling period, so that after a 2-year bottling period wines from the three systems became different enough to tell them apart. Discriminant analysis of the variables studied made it possible to establish these differences. The most meaningful variables were yellow colour component, anthocyanins (cyanidin-3-glucoside, vitisin A and sum of pcoumaryl derivates), vanillin acid, protocachuic aldehyde and epicatechin. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.