Effect of different wood chips on physico-chemical and sensory quality attributes of bitter gourd-grape blended wine during maturation

Abstract

Bitter gourd (Momordica charantia) used as a medicinal herb as anti-HIV, anti-ulcer, antiinflammatory, antileukemic, anti-microbial, antidiabetic and anti-tumer. So it can be used to prepare different processed products including beverages. Preparation of alcoholic beverages including wine is one of the options available. As bitter gourd fruit is bitter in taste so the wine is also expected to be bitter, thus a combination of bitter gourd with some suitable fruit holds promise to make a patable yet retaining the product with medicinal properties. Bitter gourd-grape wine (60% bitter gourd juice 40% grape juice) was matured for 3 months with wood chips of Quercus, Acacia and Bombax spp. (2.5 g/l of wine). A decrease in TSS (3.50 to 3.0%), total sugar (0.730 to 0.710%), titratable acidity (0.64 to 0.59%), ethanol level (3.82 to 3.69%) and colour O.D. (0.301 to 0.298) was recorded during maturation while increase in higher alcohol (48.10 to 55.00 mg/l) and antioxidant activity (67.91 to 68.60%) was observed. On the basis of various physico-chemical and sensory characteristics, bittergourd grape wine matured with Quercus spp. wood chips for 3 months was the best, followed by Acacia ssp.