Determination of aminothiols by liquid chromatography with amperometric detection at a silver electrode: Application to white wines

Liquid chromatography coupled to a silver electrode based flow-through amperometric detector (LC-EC-Ag) was developed for the determination of aminothiols in white wines. The C18 reversed phase LC system operated in the isocratic mode at 0.7 mL min⁻¹ and used an acidic mobile phase composed of formic acid, EDTA, sodium nitrate, sodium hydroxide, and methanol 1% (v/v) at pH 4.5. The working electrode operated at 0.08 V vs Ag/AgCl, 3 M KCl and its manual cleaning was realized once a month by smoothing on a polishing cloth. The analyzed aminothiols were resolved and eluted within 4 min, and all standard curves were linear in the range 2 × 10⁻⁷–2 × 10⁻⁵ M. The analyzed wine samples needed no preparation other than dilution with the mobile phase. The concentration of cysteine (CYS), homocysteine (HCYS), glutathione (GSH) and N-acetylcysteine (NAC) in bottled white wines, determined by the method of standard addition, was found to be in the low μM range (0.2–2 mg L⁻¹) depending on the wine type and its age.