Abstract:

A method for the determination of functional components in red wines by high performance liquid chromatography coupled with triple quadrupole mass spectrometry was developed. The wine samples were diluted 10 times directly and separated on a C18 column by gradient elution using acetonitrile-0.1% (v/v) formic acid aqueous solution as mobile phases. Electrospray ionization was applied and the qualitative and quantitative analyses were operated under multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode using positive and negative ion modes simultaniously. The calibration curves of 13 functional components showed good linearities (r>0.99) in their detection ranges. The limits of detection were less than 1.0 μg/L except for epigallocatechin (1.0 μg/L), gallocatechin (1.0 μg/L), catechin gallate (3.0 μg/L) and taxifolin hydrate (3.0 μg/L). The average recoveries ranged from 80.9% to 112.3%. The relative standard deviations were less than 10%. The method is quick, accurate, sensitive and suitable for the quantification of functional components in red wines. When the method was applied to commercial red wine samples, it was found that all selected wine samples contained catechin, epicatechin, epigallocatechin, gallocatechin, epicatechin gallate/catechin gallate, resveratrol, taxifolin hydrate, etc. In addition, the mass concentrations of functional components were significantly different among the red wines made from different species of grape.

Key words: functional components, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), red wines, tandem mass spectrometry