Wine analysis

Analytical analysis is performed on grapes, juice, ferments and wine at various points throughout the wine production process. Testing helps growers and winemakers to optimise processes and understand a wine’s quality, safety and compliance with domestic and international regulations.

Popular tests include:

• Sugars 
• Acids 
• Preservative and antioxidants 
• Stability analysis and fining trials
• Wine colour and tannin

Alcoholic strength analysis

Affinity Labs offers multiple methods for alcoholic strength analysis. For a comparison of the methods we offer, read our article, Measuring alcohol in wine.

Infra-red methods
These infra-red methods are fast and accurate and can be used for wines containing less than 30 g/L of sugar.

• Near infrared reflectance (NIR): this method has been calibrated using distillation and pycnometry.
• FOSS FTIR Winescan method: this method has been calibrated using the distillation and NIR method.

Distillation/densitometry method
This primary reference method is used for analysis of sweet or fortified wine products.

Methanol analysis
The concentration of methanol in wine, fortified and spirit samples is determined by capillary gas chromatography using an acetonitrile internal standard. This analysis is used to determine the methanol content of fortifying spirit, and has also been used to measure the extent of possible brine contamination. Acetaldehyde and ethyl acetate can be analysed simultaneously to methanol.

Dissolved oxygen and carbon dioxide

These methods are fast and accurate and are used to quantify dissolved oxygen and carbon dioxide in wines, using Hach ultra oxygen and CO₂ sensors together with the Orbisphere instrument.

Please note that measuring dissolved oxygen for quality assurance doesn’t always give you the full story. In bottled wine, much of the oxygen can be in the headspace. We offer a calculator to estimate total packaged oxygen based on dissolved oxygen measurements. A bottling line audit may assist your operation in improving its oxygen management.

Metals and anions analysis

Metal analysis
Affinity Labs metal analysis covers a broad range of metals and can be performed on red, white and rose wines including still, sparkling, high sugar, fortified and botrytised samples. Ferments and juice samples can also be analysed. Some analyses are NATA-accredited and performed at Affinity Labs using an inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometer (ICP-MS). Others are not accredited and performed at external laboratories. For more detail on accreditation and analysis location, see ‘Metals’ on the wine analysis page.

Anion analysis
Chloride (as NaCl) and sulfate as (K₂SO₄) analysis are performed using ion chromatography by an external laboratory. Chloride can also be analysed by silver nitrate titration at Affinity Labs.

Explore all wine laboratory analysis here.