Monitoring wine fermentation deviations using an ATR-MIR spectrometer and MSPC charts

Despite the winemaker’s efforts, deviations such as bacterial spoilage can occur during wine alcoholic fermentation resulting in economic losses and low quality wines. When a deviation is suspected, samples are usually sent to an oenological laboratory for the off-line analysis of specific quality control parameters. The use of ATR-MIR as a fast analytical tool to monitor the fermentation process could be very useful, as getting real-time information of the process allows making readjustments before the process ends. In this study, we aimed at detecting white wine spoilage during alcoholic fermentation due to the action of lactic bacteria using a portable ATR-MIR instrument and MSPC charts. A total of 33 small-scale alcoholic fermentations were conducted (25 in normal operation conditions (NOC) and 8 simulating a bacterial spoilage with the addition of lactic bacteria (MLF)) to evaluate the capability of the MSPC charts to detect deviations from NOC. MSPC control charts were developed based on Q residuals and Hotelling’s T2 statistics. Time-wise unfolding was applied to the original three-way data to build different PCA models, obtaining very satisfactory results: MLF samples were detected before the end of alcoholic fermentation in the Q residuals charts after 80 hours and Hotelling T2 chart could also differentiate the samples after 100 hours.