Effect of different plant fibers on the elimination of undesirable compounds in red wine. Correlation with its polysaccharide composition

The presence of undesirable compounds in wines, such as OTA, biogenic amines and pesticides residues, affects wine quality and can cause health problems for the consumer. The main tool that a winemaker has to reduce their content in the wine is fining. However, some of the fining agents commonly used in the winery can cause allergies or even increase the protein content in the wine, increasing the turbidity. To avoid these problems, the use of plant fibers may be an alternative, such as those from grape pomace^[1] or other plant origins.

The objective of this work was to determine the effect of two plant fibers in the reduction of undesirable compounds and to correlate their behavior with their polysaccharide composition, analyzed using comprehensive microarray polymer profiling (CoMPP). ^[2] The results showed that a white grape pomace fiber presented the highest capacity for histamine reduction in wine and also reduced large amounts of pesticides, although the highest effectiveness to remove pesticides residues was found when a cereal fiber was used. Looking for a correlation between effectivity and composition, we could see how grape fiber contained high contents of pectic polysaccharides, xyloglucans and arabinogalactan proteins (AGP) whereas the behavior of cereal fiber can only be associated to its xylan content, since the pectic polysaccharides were absent. This was a surprising finding since it is known that fibers may affect wine color due to the high affinity of their polysaccharides, especially pectic polysaccharides for polyphenols, but when looking at the effect of these two fibers on wine chromatic characteristics, the cereal fiber largely affected wine color, more than the grape pomace fiber, so another factor, such as the porosity of the fiber, must also be an important fact regarding their effectiveness.

References:

1. Jiménez-Martínez M.D. et al. (2018). Performance of purified grape pomace as a fining agent to reduce the levels of some contaminants from wine. Food Addit. Contam. Part A, 35 (6): 1061–1070, DOI.org/10.1080/19440049.2018.1459050
2. Moller, I. et al. (2008). High-throughput screening of monoclonal antibodies against plant cell wall glycans by hierarchical clustering of their carbohydrate microarray binding profiles. Glycoconj. J., 25(1): 37–48, DOI: 10.1007/s10719-007-9059-7