Analysis of pigmented polymers in red wine by reverse phase HPLC

Abstract

A reverse phase HPLC method has been developed for the quantitative analysis of pigmented polyphenolic polymers in red wines. Pigmented polymers were well separated from anthocyanins and other simple wine pigments and eluted last as a single peak. The polymeric and polyphenolic nature of this peak was confirmed by its precipitation with gelatine and its behaviour during ultrafiltration and chromatography on Sephadex LH20. This method correlates well with spectrophotometric measures of total pigmented polymers and indices of wine age. The proportion of the pigmented material incorporated into polymers increased with increasing wine age.