Natural magnetic levitation for the storage of wine bottles

Abstract

AIM: Wine storage ensuring the quality and correct aging is one of the issues that wineries, wine traders and consumers encounter after wine bottling. The environmental conditions in which the bottle are stored such as temperature, humidity and vibrations may dramatically influence the process. The aim of this project is to study a new cutting-edge technology that uses natural magnetic levitation to dampen the effects of vibrations affecting fine wine bottles.

METHODS: Free standing wine racks equipped with natural magnetic levitation devices (Relaxa, Wineleven, Italy) were compared with conventional racks for a 12-month storage of a fine red wine in bottles (see scheme). A: Relaxa (upper shelf) D: Relaxa (upper shelf) C (control) bottom shelf in contact with the floor and with A B: bottom shelf in contact with the floor (and with D) equipped with a speaker diffusing sonic vibrations floor floor 5 sampling times (2 bottles for each treatment) are planned: time 0 (start of storage); time 1 (after 30 d), time 3 m; time 6 months; time 12 months. All the samples are being analyzed for volatile compounds (GCxGC ToF/MS), phenolic profile (HPLC DAD/FLD and offline LC QqQ-MS), sensory analysis (15-person panel trained for the QDA ® method) and multivariate statistic post-processing.

RESULTS: The panel could be considered reliable for the evaluation of 22 out of 25 sensory descriptors. The statistical elaboration on sensory data showed a good discrimination among different treatments. Instead, the polyphenols and aroma compounds analysis showed mostly the effects of storage time.

CONCLUSIONS

So far (time 6), the sensory analysis showed that the descriptors overall quality judgment, as well as clarity, gustatory cleanness, dry fruit, and olfactory cleanness are linked with treatment A. The chemical profiling instead mostly described the evolution of the wines during the storage.