Natural or synthetic sweeteners, source of wine adulteration II. Studies on mediumsweet wine adulteration by adding synthetic sweeteners to marketable wines

Abstract

Medium-sweet wine counterfeiting, based on dry and mediumdry wines, represents a possible practice in winemaking industry. The primary objective of the study conducted was to improve the TLC method-Thin Layer Chromatography, by replacing the cellulose layer, recommended by STAS 6182 (17-8), with silica gel, fluorescein included. This type of layer which coats an aluminium foil removes the spraying action of fluorescein in order to detect spots of synthetic sweeteners. Another objective of this paper was the detection of synthetic sweeteners by using TLC-60254 plates, in the case study conducted on a lot of 16 wine samples which were purchased. Among the analyzed medium-sweet wine samples we identified two adulterated wines, namely sample 8, which was obtained from medium-dry wine with addition of saccharin in order to be included in the category of medium-sweet wines, and wine sample 9, for which a dry wine was used, to which an unidentified sweetener was added with 0,29 Rf.