No abstract

The aroma of six young red wines from minority grape varieties cultivated in La Mancha region has been studied by gas chromatography-olfactometry (GC-O). The GC-O study revealed the presence of 102 aromatic notes in which 88 has been identified. Aroma compounds were classified according to their aroma descriptor similarity and summed in seven distinct aromatic series consisting on fruity, floral, sweet/toasted/caramel, spice, green/fresh/herbaceous, pungent/ acid/chemical/dry and others (liquorice, leather, tobacco and cooked vegetable). Although there were distinct quantitative differences among the wines relative aromatic series profile of the six wines were similar. Forty-five compounds of the components identified in the olfactometric analysis were quantified, 19 of which were found at concentrations higher than their corresponding odour thresholds. The strongest odorants in the CG-O experiments were similar in all cases, although significant differences in the intensity between the samples were noted. The components with the greatest capacity to introduce differences between these wines were beta-damascenone, ethyl dihydrocinnamate, gammabutyrolactone, 4-ethyl guaiacol, 4-vinylguaiacol, isoeugenol, syringol, guaiacol, ethyl caprate and eugenol. The correlation between the olfactometric intensities and the quantitative data is, in general, satisfactory if the olfactometric differences between the samples are high.