Repositori URV

Identifier: TDX:441

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX441

Authors:
Llaudy Fernández, M. del Carme

Abstract:
The PhD thesis 'Contributions to the study of the factors that affect the red wine astringency ' approaches the study of wine astringency and some factors that determine it.On one hand, a new and reproducible methodology is described that allows measuring wine astringency, using a protein of easy availability: the ovalbumin, and tannic acid as standards. Based on this methodology was studied the influence of some not phenolic components of the wine as pH, ethanol concentration, glycerol concentration and the use of the Arabic gum, as example of polysaccharide, on the astringency. The results show that inside the usual intervals of pH, concentration of ethanol and of glycerol, the likely astringency variations would be moderate. On the contrary, the addition of Arabic gum to the wine produces an important decrease of the astringency. Besides, we compare the ovalbumin and the whole salivary proteins reactivity with tannic acid (tannin used as standards), different proanthocyanidins, and different degrees of polymerization and commercial wines of different origins. Both models of proteins present a high statistical correlation, which would indicate a similar behaviour when reacting with tannic acid and the proanthocyanidins, in spite of different affinities. The study of the wines gave statistically similar results in more than 80 % of case, concluding that utilization of ovalbumin as precipitation agent seems to be a good solution for the objective determination of the astringency in wines.On the other hand, two experiments are described where the new methodology is applied: - The study of the influence of the ripening stage and maceration time (1-23 days) on the contribution of each cluster grape components to phenolic composition and astringency in wine simulated ma