Identification of potential volatile markers for characterizing Argentine wine vinegars based on their production process

In Argentina, the production of quality wine vinegars has been barely exploited. Currently, most of the marketed vinegars are produced using rapid industrial fermentation systems obtaining vinegars with a high production rate, but with low quality and few organoleptic nuances. This work aims to study the volatile profile by headspace solid phase microextraction (HS-SPME) coupled to gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC–MS) and chemometrics to differentiate Argentinian wine vinegars according to their production process (industrial or traditional). A total of 92 volatile compounds were identified on the samples by using a strategy based on volatile profile processing using PARADISe® software. The complete volatile profile of all the samples was submitted to partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) for the selection of variables with importance in the projection (VIPs). Thus, 37 volatile compounds with the potential to be markers of the manufacturing process were selected. The results obtained revealed, for the first time, the volatile profile of Argentine wine vinegars showing that the compound groups that, on average, exhibited higher relative areas were esters, acids, and alcohols. Thus, certain acids, aldehydes and terpenes were noticeably present in industrial wine vinegar. Conversely, the alcohols were strongly associated with traditional ones. In the case of esters, they were connected to the different types of wine vinegars. These compounds could be considered as potential volatile markers of quality and authenticity of these types of vinegars.