Varietal discrimination of Australian wines by means of mid-infrared spectroscopy and multivariate analysis

This study outlines the use of mid-infrared (MIR) spectroscopy combined with principal component analysis (PCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) for the varietal classification of commercial red and white table wines. Three red varieties (Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz and Merlot) and four white varieties (Chardonnay, Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc and Viognier) were sourced from different wine regions in Australia. Wine samples were scanned in transmission on a FOSS WineScan FT 120 from wave numbers 926 to 5012 cm⁻¹. All samples were sourced from the 2006 vintage and had not been blended with any other variety or wine from other regions. Spectral data were reduced to a small number of principal components (PCs) and LDA was then performed to successfully separate the wines into the different varieties. To test the robustness of the LDA models developed for the red wines, a set of red wines scanned in 2005 were used. Correct classification of over 95% was achieved for the validation set.