Determination of trace elements in wines and classification according to their provenance

Provenance and authenticity of wines can be recognized on the basis of typical mineral and trace element patterns by means of chemometric methods. Therefore analytical methods were developed for the determination of As, Be, Co, Cs, Ga, Li, Nb, Ni, Rb, Te, Ti, W, Y, and Zr as well as Mo, Cd, Sb, Tl, U, and the rare earth elements in wines by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). For low risk of contamination or loss of analyte as well as depletion of sample amount and an easy sample pretreatment, direct measurement of diluted wines was studied. The accuracy of the analytical results was proven by recovery experiments by method comparison with standard addition methods and measurement of digested wines. In addition to applying statistical methods for characterizing the precision of the methods, the uncertainty of the measurements was estimated. Results for the elements mentioned above and additional 16 elements (Al, B, Ba, Ca, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn, Mg, P, Pb, Si, Sn, Sr, V, and Zn) were evaluated by data analytical methods. Due to a specific choice of the analytes for multivariate statistical investigation a prediction rate by cross validation of 88.6% could be achieved.