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A Comparative 87Sr/86Sr Study in Red andWhite Wines to Validate its Use as
Geochemical Tracer for the GeographicalOrigin of Wine
Conference Paper · September 2015
DOI: 10.1016/j.proeps.2015.07.039

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University of Florence

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Procedia Earth and Planetary Science 13 (2015) 169 – 172

11th Applied Isotope Geochemistry Conference, AIG-11 BRGM

A comparative 87Sr/86Sr study in Red and White wines to validate its
use as geochemical tracer for the geographical origin of wine
Ines Tescionea,*, Sara Marchionnib, Massimo Matteia, Franco Tassib, Claudia Romanoa,Sandro Conticellib,*aDipartimento di Scienze - Università degli Studi di Roma Tre, Largo G. Murialdo, 1, I-00146, Roma, ItalybDipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Via G. La Pira, 4, I-50121, Firenze, Italy

Abstract
Recently high precision 87Sr/86Sr analyses have shown that Red wines keep the isotopic values of the vineyard
substratum. Indeed, neither biological nor winemaking and aging processes are able to change the 87Sr/86Sr values
through the oenological food chain from grapes to Red wine. In addition, 87Sr/86Sr of Red wines and those of rocks
from the geological substratum of their vineyards correlate directly. The same holds not true for White wines,apparently. To investigate this discrepancy, 87Sr/86Sr has been determined for the entire production chain, fromterroir to final product, of Red and White wines from the same vineyard. Sr-isotope data have been also determined
for the young pyroclastic rocks of the geological substratum, and the soil of the vineyard to disambiguate theoriginal contribution to the 87Sr/86Sr values of wines. Further Sr-isotope data have been determined on additives usedfor fining the White wine. The analytical results do not show significant differences between oenological foodchains of Red and White wines. Preliminary data indicate that 87Sr/86Sr does not change passing from grape juices towine in all cases under consideration. As a corollary neither yeast nor bentonite added during vinification of both
Red and White wines do affect their Sr-isotopic values. On the other hand, 87Sr/86Sr of Red and White wines appears
to be significantly lower than values observed in rocks of their substrata. Further experiments performed on thispilot winery would be useful to shed some lights on this issue.
©
Publishedby Elsevier
B.V.B.V.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license© 2015
2015TheTheAuthors.
Authors.
Publishedby Elsevier(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of AIG-11.
Peer-review under responsibilty of the scientific committee of AID-11.
Keywords: Sr-isotope; Red and White wines; Terroir; Geologic traceability.

* Corresponding authors. Tel.: +0-000-000-0000 ; fax: +0-000-000-0000.
E-mail address: ines.tescione@uniroma3.it, sandro.conticelli@unifi.it

1878-5220 © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibilty of the scientific committee of AID-11.
doi:10.1016/j.proeps.2015.07.039

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1. Introduction
The increasing demand of high quality and safe food products in Europe promoted the development of rigid
control laws to certificate their authenticity and geographical origin and to protect both producers and consumers
from frauds. Among food products, wine is one of the most studied and protected with well-defined regulation forthe certification of origin and provenance1. For this reason, the wine geographical traceability has gained importancein the modern society producing the need of valid scientific protocols able to trace geographic provenance of wines.
These studies based on the fingerprint that the terroir leaves in the chemical composition of the final product, thenallowing scientist to define a correlation between the food and its area of production. It is well known that a strict
correlation does exist between the wine and its terroir, a precise area where climatic, physics, pedological,geological and viticultural factors interact and give the wine its typicalness2,3.
Stable isotopes of light elements are nowadays widely used to detect aroma and flavor sophistications in wines,
notwithstanding they are not reliable for defining exactly geographic traceability of wines because their strongdependence upon local climatic and anthropic factors4.
In the last decades, isotopic ratios of heavy elements of geological interest, such as 87Sr/86Sr, have gained interestin tracking regional provenance of foods and especially of wine6,7. It has been recently also shown that winemaking
process of Red wines does not affect the 87Sr/86Srof wine; this allows the direct link between theSr-isotopes of wine and those of the vineyard
substratum7-9. Recently, analytical protocols thatprovided Sr-isotope determinations in foods at
the uncertainty levels of geological materials
have been provided10-12 allowing directcomparison between 87Sr/86Sr of wine and of thesubstratum of the vineyard of production.
In figure 1 a detailed geochemical study,
focusing on the relationship between the Srisotopes of high-quality Italian wines from fivedifferent regions along the Italian peninsula andthe geology of their regions of production, isreported11. Red and some White wines have beenstudied in detail finding strict relationships
between 87Sr/86Sr of Red wines and of theirterroirs11. On the other hand, White wines andsome Red Wines from vineyards oversedimentary geological substrata in Tuscany haveshown deviations from direct correlation with thegeology of the region of production11.
Discrepancies have also been found for White
wines from other regions12 confirming thatpossible cause might be found in the different
winemaking procedure followed for vinificationof Red and White wines.
To encompass the possible cause of thediscrepancies between Red and White wines, anexperimental study on the distribution of 87Sr/86Srin the oenological food chains of Red and White
wines from the same winery has been
undertaken. 87Sr/86Sr on yeast and bentonites
used for White wine vinification have been also
Fig. 1. The bottom diagram (a) shows variation of 87Sr/86Sr of wines withdetermined. We report here the preliminary
respect of the geographic coordinates of their vineyards. The top geologicalmap of Central Italy show the locatioin of the five regions where the highresults of the first year of three for validating thequality wines are from Marchionni et al.11
experimental data.

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171

2. Materials and Methods
A small winery producing high quality Red and White “Bio” wines has been selected for this study. A geologicaland pedological detailed study has been carried out separately to define the substratum nature of the two vineyards
from which grapes are produced. Rocks and soils have been sampled and analyzed for trace elements and Srisotope. In addition, grapes of the different cultivars used for the vinification of the different wines, grape juices, andmusts of different vintage years for oenological food-chains of both Red and White wines, as well as additives used
for fining the latter, have been collected.
Rock and soil as well as grape, grape must, wine samples, yeast and bentonite have been treated and prepared formass spectrometer analyses in a clean chemistry laboratory and underwent different digestion procedures according
to methods previously described8,9,11,13. Bioavailable Sr was leached from soil using Unibest resin capsules (UnibestInc., Bozeman MT) according to Marchionni et al.9. Digested samples were subsequently treated for Sr fraction
purification with conventional cation exchange chromatography using disposable Sr-Spec resins (100-150 μm,Eichrom®) in 140 μl pure quartz micro-columns with 3N HNO3 as eluent and Milli-Q® water water to collect Sr.
Some 100-200 ng of purified Sr, accurately dissolved in 1 μl of 2N HNO 3, were loaded onto single Re filaments
using 1 μl of TaCl5 (activator) and 1 μl of H3PO5 (fractionation suppressor)9,11. Sr isotopes abundances have beenmeasured in dynamic mode using a Thermo Finnigan™ Triton-Ti magnetic sector field thermal ionisation massspectrometer (TIMS) at the University of Firenze9,11,13. External precision of NIST SRM987 international reference
sample for period of this study was 87Sr/86Sr = 0.710251±10 (2σ, n=40), whilst the long-term mean value was0.710248 ± 16 (2σ, n =213, equivalent to an error of 23 ppm).
3. Results and discussion

Fig. 2. Representation of the preliminary data of the isotopic values ofgrape, juice, must, wine and additives from the two different vineyards
through the years. Results show that the IR remains constant during theoenological production chain and is not affected by additives. Thevalues of the diagram on the right (San Lorenzo vineyard) are lower
because of the different geologic bedrock.

Fig. 3. Mean values of 87Sr/86Sr in both vineyards. The evident
difference allows to distinguish the two different vineyards, andrelative bedrocks, of provenance of wines. The lower value of Red
wine from Sassotondo could be due to a mixing with wine fromS.Lorenzo.

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Ines Tescione et al. / Procedia Earth and Planetary Science 13 (2015) 169 – 172

Preliminary results show two distinct groups of values relative to the “Sassotondo” and “San Lorenzo” vineyards
lying on two different volcanic rock units. The isotopic values measured in grapes, grape juices, must and wines
through the years are in a narrow interval at different levels depending upon the vineyard of provenance rather than
to the addition of either yeast or bentonite. For example, the Greco cultivar for the vintage years 2013 and 2014 does
not change significantly independently by the addition of yeast and bentonite.
The Sr-isotope data in grapes of different cultivars suggest that the isotopic ratio of the Sr absorbed by the roots
does not dependent upon the different type of vine cultivar, but the mechanism of elements absorption is the samefor the different plants and it reflects the value of the respective geologic bedrock. The lower 87Sr/86Sr observed in
all products of the enological food chains with respect to the values of the bedrocks are not related to additives, butthey possibly depend upon other geochemical factors. Further experiments on other vintage years are, however,needed to validate these preliminary findings and to better define the role of groundwater in controlling the final
87
Sr/86Sr of the wines.
Acknowledgements
Analytical costs have been fully covered by the Radiogenic Isotope Laboratory of the Dipartimento di Scienze della
Terra of the University of Florence. The senior authors (S.C. & M.M.) wish to thanks Carla Benini and Edoardo
Ventimiglia of the Sassotondo winery for allowing periodic access to vineyards and winery and cellar for sampling.
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