The contribution of varietal thiols in the diverse aroma of Italian monovarietal white wines.

Food research international (Ottawa, Ont.) 2022 Jul

filter terms:

Thanks to their low odor detection thresholds, free varietal thiols (VTs) play a key role in the primary aroma of wines, to which they confer an intense scent reminiscent of box tree, grapefruit, citrus fruits, passionfruit and cat urine odor. Excluding wines from a few VT-rich grapevine cultivars, VTs appear to be present in most cultivars at trace levels, although a comprehensive dataset is still missing. The low concentration of VTs combined with their high reactivity and matrix complexity make their determination in wines a challenging task. In this research an optimized liquid chromatography - tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) method was validated and used for the quantification of 4-methyl-4-sulfanylpentan-2-one (4-MSP), 3-sulfanylhexan-1-ol (3-SH), 3-sulfanylhexyl acetate (3-SHA) and ethyl 3-sulfanylpropionate (E3SP) in 246 samples (vintage 2019) representative of 18 monovarietal Italian white wines. VTs were detected in all cultivars even though higher values of 3-SH were found in Lugana, Müller-Thurgau and Verdicchio cultivars. Müller-Thurgau wines showed the highest level of 4-MSP, that was mainly correlated to the odor descriptors of passionfruit and box tree/cat urine. The VTs composition of Müller-Thurgau was confirmed on a second set of 50 wines from different vintages. From a sensory perspective, the samples of Müller-Thurgau showed the best positive correlations between chemical variables and the odor descriptors thiol note, passion fruit and box tree/cat urine. These notes are significantly related to 4-MSP, suggesting that it could play a relevant olfactory role for the aroma of Müller-Thurgau wines. Sorting analysis allowed to group these wines according to their thiolic characteristics. The chemical variables and the odor descriptors attributable to the thiol notes are important for Müller-Thurgau and Lugana wines, while the contribution of thiol notes was sensorially negligible for the other wines. Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Citation

Silvia Carlin, Maurizio Piergiovanni, Elisabetta Pittari, Maria Tiziana Lisanti, Luigi Moio, Paola Piombino, Matteo Marangon, Andrea Curioni, Luca Rolle, Susana Rìo Segade, Andrea Versari, Arianna Ricci, Giuseppina Paola Parpinello, Giovanni Luzzini, Maurizio Ugliano, Daniele Perenzoni, Urska Vrhovsek, Fulvio Mattivi. The contribution of varietal thiols in the diverse aroma of Italian monovarietal white wines. Food research international (Ottawa, Ont.). 2022 Jul;157:111404