Relationship between foaming properties and polyphenolic composition of sparkling wines

Abstract

Natural sparkling wine elaborated with the champenoise method is the final product after two fermentations followed byaging period for at least 9 months with yeast inside the bottle (EC Regulation Nº 606/2009). The foam of sparkling wines is akey parameter of their quality. The foam properties, foamability and foam stability, have been correlated with the sparklingwine chemical composition, although the compounds that are directly involved in foam quality are not yet completelyestablished. Some authors have attempted to correlate the amount of proteins, polysaccharides, amino acids and peptidesin sparkling wines with the quality of their foam properties but there are few studies polyphenols, and most of them arecarried out in model systems, musts or base wines and refer to global measurements of polyphenols. Therefore, the aim ofthis work was to correlate the foaming properties of sparkling wines with their polyphenolic composition in order to ascertain which phenolic compounds are those that influence foam, which could be critical in the production of red androsé sparkling wines.Sparkling wines were produced from red grapes during different vintages following the traditional or champenoise method.Foam instrumental parameters were analyzed by the Mosalux method (Maujean et al. 1990). Anthocyanins,hydroxycinnamic acids, flavonols, flavan-3-ols, and gallic acid were analyzed by HPLC-DAD as previously described (Gómez-Alonso et al. 2007). Wine samples fractionated by gel permeation chromatography (GPC) as described by Guadalupe et al.(2006), and phloroglucinol adducts in F2 fractions were analyzed by reversed-phase HPLC-DAD as described by Kennedy andJones (2001).None of the wine polyphenols was correlated with the foam stability time (TS). However, most anthocyanins andproanthocyanidins were correlated with the maximum height (HM) and the foam stability height (HS), indicating that theywould affect the foamability of sparkling wines