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The possibility of using front-face fluorescence spectroscopy to characterize red wines was investigated, and a tentative identification of their main fluorescent components was attempted. Fifty-seven red wine samples from different origins were included in the present study. Their fluorescence excitation-emission matrices (EEMs) were registered directly on 3-mL aliquots of untreated samples. The assayed excitation and emission ranges were 245-340 and 300-500 nm, respectively. The set of 57 EEMs was analyzed by means of parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC). Thus, the spectral excitation and emission profiles of possible "pure" fluorescence components (PARAFAC loadings) and the relative contribution of each component to the individual EEMs (PARAFAC scores) were obtained. The red wine system contained four main fluorescence components, and the excitation and emission loadings had maxima at the wavelength pairs 260/380, 275/323, 330/410, and 280/364 nm, respectively. A tentative identification of fluorophores was done by matching PARAFAC score values with HPLC measurements on the same 57 samples, as well as fluorescence measurements on pure compounds typically present in red wine. It was found that the third component was highly correlated with concentrations of catechin and epicatechin. When the PARAFAC score values were plotted against each other, they did to some extent discriminate the wines according to origin (country) and grape variety.

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