Wine Traceability and Authenticity – a Literature Review

In the actual economic context, the agro-food economy is focused on the consumer demands regarding quality, safety and security of food and foodstuffs. Traceability of wine can be defined as a method through which anybody in the wine supply chain can be able to verify the origin and composition of each batch of wines, its conditions of storage, and all the products that were in contact with the wine after the production. Traceability in the wine industry has an important role in a quality assurance management system. It ensures the registration on specific documents of all manipulations of raw materials, ingredients and final products. They are created especially to allow a rapid identification of the product history. The wine supply chain requires traceability from grape production to processing and wine distribution. Authenticity of wine has been extensively investigated because wine is an easily adulterated product due to its chemical composition and its availability throughout the world. Responsible and continuous controls are required to maintain the quality of wine. Usually volatile compounds are used to characterize varieties, whereas minerals are used for geographical differentiation. Amino acids as well as phenolic compounds evaluation are used for both. The development of advanced techniques for wines authentication is a challenge, which currently is given a special attention. In this literature review, latest scientific papers on this subject will be assessed in order to establish the state of the art in the proposed field and to establish further research needed.