Employment of nearinfraredspectroscopy to determine oak volatile compounds and ethylphenols in aged red wines

The aim of this work was to study the ability of NIR spectroscopy to determine oak volatile compounds and ethylphenols levels in aged red wines. For this purpose 510 wines aged with different storage time and in different oak barrel types were analyzed. Calibration models were developed from SBSE-GC–MS and NIR data using partial least squares (PLS) regression. In order to validate the calibration, full cross validation was employed. Results showed that the calibration statistics were very good (R2 > 0.86) for all the compounds studied. In wines aged in French and in American and French oak barrels, and in “reserva” and “gran reserva” wines, the residual predictive deviation (RPD) obtained was higher than 1.5 in all the compounds and it was higher than 2 in some of the cases. In conclusion, nearinfraredspectroscopy can be used as a rapid tool to determine oak volatile compounds and ethylphenols in aged red wines.Many thanks for the financial support given by the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia to the project AGL2004-04609 and to Kathy Walsh for proofreading the English manuscript. T.G.-C. also wishes to thank the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia for the Juan de la Cierva contract and to Jorge Puente (Perkin Elmer S.A., Spain) for his technical assistance.Peer reviewe