CHARACTERIZATION OF SOME ITALIAN V. VINIFERA RED GRAPE CULTIVARS ON THE BASIS OF THEIR ANTHOCYANIN PROFILES

“Suspect screening analysis” is a middle-way approach in metabolomics between ‘targeted’ and ‘untargeted’ analyses. To develop a new method of grape metabolomics, a new database of putative grape and wine metabolites (GrapeMetabolomics) has been expressly constructed. Currently, this database contains more than a thousand compounds. By performing high-resolution mass spectrometric analyses of grape extracts in positive and negative ionization mode, and using GrapeMetabolomics, 320-450 putative compounds have been identified. Most of them are grape metabolites very important in determining the organoleptic characteristics of wine or with biological proprieties, such as anthocyanins, stilbene derivatives, and flavonols. In hybrid grapes, this method allowed the identification of 30 anthocyanins. In the present study, this method was used to study the anthocyanin composition of ten autochthonous Italian V. vinifera red grape cultivars. By performing statistical analyses (PCA and cluster analysis), the effect of cultivar on the anthocyanin composition of the grape was studied.