The electronic nose as a tool for the classification of fruit and grape wines from different Ontario wineries

Electronic nose technology is useful for classifying or ‘fingerprinting’ foods and beverages based on odour profiles. With a view to providing useful information on quality attributes, the Fox 3000 electronic nose (EN) was tested for the ability to characterize Ontario-produced fruit wines. Eight fruit wines (blueberry, cherry, raspberry, blackcurrant, elderberry, cranberry, apple and peach) and four grape wines (red, Chardonnay, Riesling and ice wine) were each obtained from a minimum of five Ontario wineries. Replicates of each wine sample were dried onto membrane filters to remove ethanol, and analyzed by the EN. It was possible to separate completely each wine variety (eg blueberry) based on differences between wineries; however, when all wine data were pooled, classification by variety was poor (58.7% correctly classified). Analysis of different wine varieties from a single winery revealed some misclassification. Wines could be separated into four distinct groups based on position on the discriminant function analysis map (79.9% correct). Fruit and grape wines were well separated from each other (75.9% correct), as were red and white wines (92.2% correct). The results show that the EN can discriminate fruit and grape wines into natural and useful groupings and may become an important tool for standardization of wine quality. Copyright © 2005 Society of Chemical Industry