Abstract
Phenolic compounds determine the color quality of fruit wines. In this study, the phenolic compound content and composition, color characteristics and changes during 6 months of bottle aging were studied in wines fermented with bog bilberry syrup under three different pHs. The total anthocyanins and total phenols were around 15.12–16.23 mg/L and 475.82 to 486.50 mg GAE/L in fresh wines and declined 22%–31% and about 11% in bottle aged wines, respectively. In fresh wines, eight anthocyanins, six phenolic aids and 14 flavonols, but no flavon-3-ols were identified; Malvidin-3-O-glucoside, petunidin-3-O-glucoside and delphinium-3-O-glucoside were the predominant pigments; Chlorogentic acid was the most abundant phenolic acid, and quercetin-3-O-galactoside and myricetin-3-O-galactoside accounted for nearly 90% of the total flavonols. During 6 months of bottle storage, the amounts of all the monomeric anthocyanins and phenolic acids were reduced dramatically, while the glycosidyl flavonols remained constant or were less reduced and their corresponding aglycones increased a lot. The effects of aging on blueberry wine color were described as the loss of color intensity with a dramatic change in color hue, from initial red-purple up to final red-brick nuances, while the pH of the fermentation matrix was negatively related to the color stability of aged wine.
Highlights
Vaccinium uliginosum, known as bog bilberry, belongs to the Ericaceae family of the Vaccinium genus [1]
The wild blueberry syrup, which are the byproducts of dried berry snack processing and contain plenty of sugars, organic acids and phenolic compounds, were used as raw materials to produce fruit wines by dilution and pH adjustment
It was worth noting that some other phenolic acids and their esters, including fertaric acid, coutaric acid and caftaric acid which are quite common in grape wines, were not detected in the wine samples studied here. These results demonstrated that the phenolic acid compositions of blueberry wines were quite distinct from those of grape wines which have been studied in detail previously [16,19,24,41,42]
Summary
Known as bog bilberry, belongs to the Ericaceae family of the Vaccinium genus [1]. It was well documented that V. uliginosum berries have several kinds of high nutritional values and medicinal effects, such as preventing cranial nerve aging, strengthening cardiac functions, combating cancers, softening blood vessels and enhancing immunity [7,8,9,10]. Due to their low sugars and high organic acids contents, V. uliginosum berries are not consumed fresh but rather usually steeped in a solution with high sugar content for hours and dried into fruit snacks for local markets. Our research groups have developed a process to convert these syrup into fermented red wines by supplementation of an appropriate nitrogen source such as dibasic ammonium phosphate (DAP) [13]
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