X-ray Fluorescence Techniques for Element Abundance Analysis in Wine.

The elemental composition has been extensively used to characterize wine and to find correlations with environmental and winemaking factors. Although X-ray fluorescence (XRF) techniques offer many advantages, they have been rarely used for wine analysis. Here, we show the comparison of wine elemental composition results obtained by total reflection X-ray fluorescence (TXRF) and energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDXRF) for elements K, Ca, Mn, Fe, Cu, Zn, Br, Rb, and Sr. The results obtained by TXRF and EDXRF have been additionally verified by inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry. The important analytical features of XRF techniques in wine science have been described, the preservation of volatile elements (e.g., Br) being one of their main advantages. In addition, we have shown that XRF techniques offer an optimal analytical approach for building large data sets containing highly reliable and reproducible results of elemental abundances in wines, corresponding soils, and grape juice. Such data sets are especially important for the geographic authentication of wine. This has been shown for 37 Austrian and Croatian wines collected together with respective soils from selected wine regions. The element abundances in soil reflect in a large portion in grape juice and finished wine suggesting that the contribution of the soil, that is, the plant uptake capacity expressed as

© 2021 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.

The authors declare no competing financial interest.