Love Chemicals? Enjoy Some Organic Wine

Posted on January 22, 2016 by Josh Bloom @ The American Council on Science and Health

Sorry, chemophobes, but if you really hate chemicals, wine is off the menu. That goes for organic, shade tree, non-GMO, free-range and whatever other grapes. Wine is chock full of cancer-causing chemicals. Frank Sinatra summed it up best in his smash hit “Love and Marriage”: You can’t have one without the other.

There are dozens of chemicals that make up wine, and now there is cool instrumental technology that can analyze them and let growers know when is the best time to pick the grapes for maximum chemical effect. And it shows us that chemophobes are putting their heads in a bottle if they think organic wine is any safer than conventional.

A study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry used a combination of gas chromatography (to separate all the chemicals) and ultra-sensitive mass spectrometry (to identify them) as a tool to determine what the right time was to pick grapes to get the best wine. They also used the human nose, which is more sensitive than any instrument. Very clever stuff.

Here’s how it works. First, the grapes are chemically broken down, and the chemicals that make up the flavors are extracted using solvents. It takes a whole bunch (ahem) of grapes to provide enough of these chemicals to be measured. Once this is done, the crude extract is separated into its components using gas chromatography. This is pretty interesting:

Modification of an original image from PBS
Now for the second part. Here is the machine (Agilent 5973 mass selective detector)
 that tells you what chemical each peak is:

Now for the second part. Here is the machine (Agilent 5973 mass selective detector) that tells you what chemical each peak is:


Basically, the group determined that the presence of four of the chemicals was the best indicator of when it was time to pick the grapes, which is great for advancing the science of wine. Far more interesting is the 49 chemical ingredients that make up just the odor and flavor of wine.

If you don’t like chemicals, throw away the following:

1. All of your wine
2. That check you were going to send to Environmental Working Group
3. Directions to Whole Foods

Here are the chemicals in wine, including the organic kind. I only put comments on a few of the really neat ones. If you want to see the full list, that is below. Bottoms up.

Chemical Compound	Description	Comments
2,3-Butanedion	creamy, fruity,  buttery	Butter flavor in popcorn. Causes lung damage when inhaled (popcorn lung). EWG wants it banned from fragrances.
Butanal	bread, toasted	On the NJ Hazardous Substance List
Butanoic acid	cheese	The chemical that gives vomit its odor. Also ginko  berries.
Guaiacol	sweet, phenolic,  clove	Found in wood smoke.
Benzyl alcohol	floral	Preservative. EWG calls it a neurotoxin.
p-Cresol	animal, woody	On California’s Proposition 65 list as a  carcinogen. Has been called an endocrine disruptor.
m-Cresol	leather, woody	On California’s Proposition 65 list as a carcinogen. Has been called an endocrine disruptor.
Eugenol	spicy, clove	Clove oil. EWG calls it “quite troubling.”
4-vinylguaiacol	clove, woody	Considered to be an endocrine disruptor by the UK  Environmental Agency
Benzoic acid	spicy	Preservative. Banned by Whole Foods
Vanillin	vanilla, creamy	Principle flavor of vanilla. Banned by Whole Foods as “artificial flavor”

*EWG = Environmental Working Group

And the rest, but I think you get the point by now:  1-Hexanol, (Z)-3-Hexenol, 2-Octenal, (E)-2-Hexenol, Acetic acid, Methional, 2-Methyl-3-buten-2-ol, 3-sec-Butyl-2-methoxypyrazine, 3-Isobutyl-2-methoxypyrazine, Linalool, 2,6-Nonadienal, 2-Phenylacetaldehyde, 3-Methylbutanoic acid, α-Terpineol, (E)-2,4-Decadienal, β-Damascenone, Hexanoic acid, 2-Phenylethanol, β-Ionone, p-Methylguaiacol,
p-Ethylguaiacol, 4-Hydroxy-2,5-dimethyl-3 (2H)-furanone, (E)-2-Hexenoic acid,
4-Ethylphenol, 3-Ethylphenol, 2,6-Dimethoxyphenol, 4-Vinylphenol