micro-oxygenation in contemporary winemaking - Cape Wine ...

Micro-oxygenation in Contemporary Winemaking6.3 THE ANALYSIS OF PHENOLIC COMPOUNDS IN WINETo some extent, our increased understanding of the reactions of phenolic compounds inwine, as outlined in Section 6.2, is the result of advances in the techniques available for thefractionation and assay of wine phenolic compounds. In research laboratories methodssuch as high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) allow the identification andquantification of individual phenolic molecules and mass spectrophotometry is used toelucidate the complex structure of different phenolic derivatives. However, there are alsobasic spectrophotometric and chemical analysis which can be conducted in winerylaboratories to measure key phenolic characteristics.The vast literature on phenolic analysis will not be presented here. There are a number ofmore technical texts available for the interested reader (Somers, 1987; de Beer et al.,2004; Herderich and Smith, 2005; Ribéreau-Gayon et al., 2006c; Garcia-Falcon et al.,2007; Roussis et al., 2007; Versari et al., 2008; Seddon and Downey, 2008).However, a basic appreciation of some of the important phenolic tests and indices is helpfulin understanding the technical academic literature. The more common tests for assayingwine phenolic compounds are summarised overleaf in Table 14.54