A Sensitive LC-MS Method for Anthocyanins and Comparison of Byproducts and Equivalent Wine Content

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Anthocyanins are a group of phenolic compounds with great importance, not only because they play a crucial role in a wine’s quality, but also due to the fact that they can have beneficial effects on human health. In this work, a method was developed for the detection and identification of these compounds in solid wastes of the wine-making industry (red grape skins and pomace), using liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) prior to the liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry technique (LC-MS). The complete process was investigated and optimized, starting from the extraction conditions (extraction solution selection, dried matter-to-solvent volume ratio, water bath extraction duration, and necessary consecutive extraction rounds) and continuing to the mobile phase selection. The extraction solution chosen was a methanol/phosphoric acid solution (95/5, v/v), while three rounds of consecutive extraction were necessary in order to extract the maximum amount of anthocyanins from the byproducts. During the LC-MS analysis, acetonitrile was selected as the organic solvent since, compared with methanol, not only did it exhibit increased elution strength, but it also produced significantly narrower peaks. To enable accurate identification of the analytes and optimization of the developed method, kuromanin chloride and myrtillin chloride were used as standards. Furthermore, the wine variety (Syrah) from which the specific byproducts were produced was analyzed for its anthocyanin content, leading to interesting conclusions about which anthocyanins are transferred from grapes to wine during the vinification procedure, and to what extent. The results of this study showed that the total concentration of anthocyanins estimated in wine byproducts exceeded almost 12 times the equivalent concentration in Syrah wine, while the four categories of detected anthocyanins, simple glucosides, acetyl glucosides, cinnamoyl glucosides, and pyroanthocyanins, were present in different ratios among the two samples, ranging from 18.20 to 1, to 5.83 to 1. These results not only confirmed the potential value of these byproducts, but also indicated the complexity of the anthocyanins’ transfer mechanism between a wine and its byproducts.