Beyond colors of rosé wines: impact of origin and winemaking technology on their color, polyphenol and thiol compositions

Abstract

Rosé wine consumption is rapidly increasing with its market share in France that has grown from 11 % to 32 % in less than 20 years. A recent trend is also to produce rosé wines with lighter colors. Varieties, terroir and technology certainly have an influence on rosé wine colors. We used different analytical techniques (colorimetry, UPLC-MS) and data management strategies (molecular modelling and multivariate discrimination analysis) to investigate the relationship between natural and human factors on the final composition of rosés wine. We showed that some polyphenols can be key markers of the origin for 60 commercial wines from the Bordeaux, Languedoc and Provence regions. We also demonstrated that PVPP treatment reduces the color of rosé wines by specifically adsorbing some classes of polyphenols and pigments like coumaroylated anthocyanins. This specific adsorption phenoma was explained by molecular modelling calculations of interactions between anthocyanins and PVPP. Finally we showed for the first time that the thiol aromatic indexes of rosé wines can be increased by PVPP treatment up to 200 % compared to the control.