Method Development for the Determination of Seven Organic Acids in Wines by Reversed-Phase High Performance Liquid Chromatography

Abstract

A simple high performance liquid chromatographic method is described for the determination of seven organic acids usually found in wines. The acids were eluted in the isocratic mode, in less than 12 min, on a reversed-phase ODS-2 (250 × 4 mm I.D.), 5 μm, column with 0.02 M potassium dihydrogen phosphate (pH 2.88), to which was added a small amount of methanol (2%) as organic modifier, and were detected by ultraviolet absorbance at 230 nm. Galacturonic, tartaric, malic (both enantiomers), lactic, acetic, citric and succinic acids were determined, using xanthine as a chromatographic internal standard. The method was applied to white and red wines of Greek origin, after sample clean-up with polyvinylpyrrolidone, followed by passage through SAX cartridges and yielded recoveries from 78.0 to 106.8%. The limits of detection ranged between 0.001–0.05 g.L⁻¹ and the linear ranges between 0.003–2.0 g.L⁻¹.