Abstract
There is restricted knowledge about the potential impact of the use of different wood species on color and anthocyanin changes during the red wine aging process. This lack of knowledge is even greater when no oak wood species are used. Thus, the aim of this study was to carry out a comparative analysis of the impact of wood chip extracts from oak, acacia, and cherry species on the color characteristics and anthocyanins changes using synthetic wine solutions. In this context, several methodologies were used to quantify, color, and anthocyanins changes during the aging time studied. The results indicated that the contact between wood chip extracts and grape skin isolated anthocyanin extracts induced a decrease of color intensity (particularly red color), and the anthocyanin content in the different experimental synthetic wine solutions studied. All chromatic modifications are potentially detected by human eyes because ΔE values were much higher than 3 CIELab units. These tendencies seem to be independent of the wood species used, but are more pronounced for higher contact time between wood chip extracts and anthocyanins. The obtained results may contribute to a better understanding of the chromatic changes of red wines when aged in contact with different wood chip species.
Highlights
The use of wood during the process of red wine aging is a common practice in most of the world’s wine producing regions
According to the main aim of this study, discussion of the obtained results will be focused on the effect of wood extractable components on the chromatic characteristics of red synthetic wine and on the anthocyanins, which are the compounds with more influence on red wine color
The present work points out the impact of the different wood chip species on anthocyanin content and chromatic characteristics of synthetic wine solutions during the contact time considered
Summary
The use of wood during the process of red wine aging is a common practice in most of the world’s wine producing regions. During wine aging in contact with oak wood, using oak barrels, beside oxygen permeation, many compounds such as gallic, ellagic acids, and ellagitannins are extracted into wine and are involved in a great number of reactions with wine phenolic compounds, with anthocyanins modifying their chemical structure. The oxidation of anthocyanins during wine aging in oak barrels leads to the dismissal of red color and their combination with oak tannins increases their stability and gives red-purple tones [1,2]. For monomeric anthocyanins, their concentration in red wine declines constantly during the aging process. There are a series of mechanisms that might be related to such changes, namely, their adsorption by yeasts, precipitation with proteins, polysaccharides, or with condensed tannins, their oxidation, and the progressive formation of more complex anthocyanin derived pigments, such as pyranoanthocyanins and polymeric
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