Wine is not just a drink that is drunk on holidays or served for dinner. Wine is a whole culture, art and history, embodied in every drop. It is the result of centuries of tradition, experimentation and passion invested in production. This is a story that tells about the region, the climate, the peculiarities of the soil in the vineyards and the traditions of winemaking.

Today, in order to find out the origin and grade of a particular wine, we turn to the label. But, unfortunately, the information on it is not always reliable. So, from year to year, wine counterfeiting is revealed on the market. For example: a Russian wine drink is passed off as a merlot of French origin, artfully forging labels, corks, and so on. At the same time, the receipt for such products can reach tens of thousands of rubles at a meager cost.

Despite the magnitude of the problem, it is encouraging that modern technologies make it possible to avoid such falsification. Thus, scientists at the Southern Federal University have developed a unique opportunity to look into the history of wine and read its "passport".

"You can read this story through the elemental composition of wine, grape juice and the soil on which the grapes grew – these are the "fingerprints" of wine. It is known that the mineral composition of soils directly affects the composition of beverages, establishing a traceable relationship to determine the region of origin of wine," said Elizaveta Mukhanova, head of the International Research Laboratory of Functional Nanomaterials at the SFedU Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.

According to her, the composition can be analyzed using various methods described in the literature. One of them is X-ray fluorescence analysis. This method has several advantages for determining the origin of wine and detecting counterfeits. It is non-destructive, fast, relatively cheap and allows you to analyze even small volumes of samples. But its main advantage is the ability to detect a wide range of elements that are necessary to determine the characteristics of wine and detect counterfeits, such as bromine, a volatile substance that other methods do not always detect. Thus, in the course of research, it was found that iron, zinc, bromine, rubidium and strontium are the best elements for geographical identification of wine.

Comparing X-ray fluorescence analysis (XRF) with other methods such as mass spectrometry, it should be noted that, despite the high sensitivity of mass spectrometry, this method requires more time for analysis and sample preparation. This makes XRF more efficient for routine analysis of a large number of samples, their statistical processing, and the creation of terroir databases. In addition, other methods, although more accurate, are significantly more expensive and focus primarily on the organic components of the wine, which can change during fermentation and maturation, which limits their completeness for elemental analysis.

To test the X-ray fluorescence analysis technique, SFedU scientists analyzed about ten wine samples: one variety from different countries (merlot from France and Chile), various varieties of wines, as well as soils from different sources. As a result, it was found that the sensitivity of the method is sufficient to identify beverages by region of origin. Thus, merlot from Chile and France show differences in the elemental composition of both the main components (concentrations of potassium, sodium and calcium) and the minor ones (composition and concentration).

Based on the results obtained, we can conclude that this method has prospects for analyzing and identifying wines from Italy and Australia, including using machine learning methods that allow us to get an idea of the features of terroirs and predict the possibility of using new geographical areas for their formation.

"Despite its advantages, X-ray fluorescence analysis may not detect some organic impurities as effectively as chromatography and IR spectroscopy. To solve this problem, an integrated approach can be carried out in the SFU laboratories, combining X–ray fluorescence analysis with other methods, which can provide the most complete results for identifying the origin and adulteration of wine," Elizaveta emphasized.

The results of the project were presented at the Partnership: Science and Business forum, which was held in Rostov-on-Don.