Wine Authenticity Project in NMR – WAP-NMR

European wine sector generates a great deal of wealth production but must face an increasing issue of frauds and counterfeits. Counterfeit wine is one of the oldest and most common cases of food fraud in the world. Therefore, wine authenticity, closely related to the concept of traceability, is an issue of great importance. To ensure traceability and guarantee wine authenticity, it is necessary to have robust and reliable methods of analysis and control. Several methods have been developed for fighting wine frauds, from organoleptic testing to more sophisticated methodologies such as isotopic techniques for botanical origin assessment, or ultra-low radioactivity measurements. However, with counterfeits becoming increasingly more sophisticated, more complex methodologies are required for their detection. In this context, innovative applications of metabolomics tools can contribute to the assessment of wine authenticity. The main goal of WAP-NMR is to provide tools for wine control based on NMR- and MS metabolomics approaches in an official control perspective.

WAP-NMR will tackle the scientific and technical barriers that face the development of a universal 1H-NMR-based metabolomics approach to guarantee wine authenticity: (1) the development of transparent, flexible and user-friendly standard operating protocols (SOPs) from sample preparation to data integration for targeted NMR approaches; (2) the development and validation of a transparent strategy for untargeted approaches including robustness verification and long-term stability; (3) the development of transparent and standardized chemometric workflows for data evaluation; (4) the development of joint usage and management of quantitative data and spectra collections; (5) the development, assessment and implementation of new complementary NMR and MS-based metabolomics tools for wine authentication. To achieve these objectives the project is subdivided in three Tasks: development of SOPs for 1D 1H-NMR approaches including concept validation, standardization, and data collection (Task 1), development of interactive tools for chemometrics and management of data and metadata (Task 2), development of innovative and integrative approaches based on 2D-NMR and MS (including targeted and untargeted GC- and LC-MS) for wine authenticity analysis (Task 3). A database from over 1,500 authentic wines references will be established to validate the different approaches in official wine control context and test the trustworthiness of the methods.

To perform these tasks, the WAP-NMR consortium associates three academic laboratories, two private wine laboratories, and the French official control laboratory. The three academic partners are : (Partner 1) UR Oenologie (EA 4577, USC 1366 INRAE, Univ. Bordeaux), whose central theme consists in the preservation and enhancement of wine quality, with a special focus on the development of targeted and/or untargeted tools for wine analysis; (Partner 2) UMR INRAE 1332 BFP, with a strong expertise in plant metabolomics and data analysis and sharing; and (Partner 3) UMR INRAE 1083 SPO, specialized in the study of the mechanisms involved in construction of wine quality and expert on metabolomic approaches related to wine quality and typicity. Partner 4 is the Service commun des laboratoires DGDDI et DGCCRF (SCL), which is the French reference laboratory for official controls on food and non-food products. The two private partners are (Partner 5) Les Laboratoires Dubernet, a very high-tech oriented oenological analysis laboratory, and (Partner 6) Les Grands Chais de France (GCF), the leading privately-owned winemaker in France. Both SCL and Les Laboratoires Dubernet are members of the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) French delegation.