Introduction

Within a 'Total Quality Focus' project funded by the New York Wine and Grape Foundation, Profs. Gavin Sacks and Ramón Mira de Orduña of Cornell University are currently carrying out the First Comprehensive Winemaker and Grower Oriented Quality Analysis of New York State Wines.

Whole bottle samples of commercialized wines will be collected and analyzed for standard wine parameters as well as trace aroma compounds and other key metabolites relevant for wine aroma, color and chemistry in order to obtain a comprehensive overview of New York wine quality, such as acetaldehyde, reduced sulfur compounds, monoterpenes and methoxypyrazines.

The project is shaped according to a recent survey of acetaldehyde levels in wines from Ontario carried out by the researchers.

Specficically, wines will be random coded once received and any information regarding these wines will always be reported using this code. Wineries will be informed only about the codes of the wines they donated. This method will allow wineries to retrieve information about their own wines and to compare these with all other (anonymous) wines at the same time.

Even though we only require small quantities of wine for our analyses, we are requesting samples of commercial wine bottles since taking samples from opened bottles at the winery, transferring and storing samples - even with precautionary measures (rapid sampling with protective gas, cool storage) - will lead to volatilisation and oxygenation of the wines causing modifications of the compounds to be measured.

Your donations are essential for the success of this research project. At the same time, the results will provide you with information about your own wines and allow us to obtain a overall picture of New York State wines with the aim to efficiently support New york wineries and further improve wine quality in a competitive market place.

We will use this page in order to provide background information about the analytes measured, as well as to present data collected within the projet over the next months.

Please contact the principal investigators by email or telephone any time you wish to obtain further information about this project.

Wines may be sent to:

Gavin Sacks or Ramón Mira de Orduña
Re: TQF project
Department of Food Science and Technology
New York Agricultural Experiment Station
Cornell University
630 West North Street
Geneva, NY 14456

Gavin Sacks, Assistant Professor of Enology
Ramón Mira de Orduña , Associate Professor of Enology

Laste edited on:
September 19, 2007