Chemical messages in 170-year-old champagne bottles from the Baltic Sea: Revealing tastes from the past.

Archaeochemistry as the application of the most recent analytical techniques to ancient samples now provides an unprecedented understanding of human culture throughout history. In this paper, we report on a multiplatform analytical investigation of 170-y-old champagne bottles found in a shipwreck at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, which provides insight into winemaking practices used at the time. Organic spectroscopy-based nontargeted metabolomics and metallomics give access to the detailed composition of these wines, revealing, for instance, unexpected chemical characteristics in terms of small ion, sugar, and acid contents as well as markers of barrel aging and Maillard reaction products. The distinct aroma composition of these ancient champagne samples, first revealed during tasting sessions, was later confirmed using state-of-the-art aroma analysis techniques. After 170 y of deep sea aging in close-to-perfect conditions, these sleeping champagne bottles awoke to tell us a chapter of the story of winemaking and to reveal their extraordinary archaeometabolome and elemental diversity in the form of chemical signatures related to each individual step of champagne production.

N,S,O-Heterocycles in Aged Champagne Reserve Wines and Correlation with Free Amino Acid Concentrations.

Champagne regulations allow winegrowers to stock still wines to compensate for quality shifts in vintages, mainly due to climate variations. According to their technical requirements and house style, Champagne producers use these stored wines in their blends to enhance complexity. The presence of lees and aging at low pH (2.95-3.15), as in Champagne wines, lead to several modifications in wine composition. These conditions, combined with extended aging, result in the required environment for the Maillard chemical reaction, involving aromatic molecules, including sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen heterocycles (such as thiazole, furan, and pyrazine derivatives), which may have a sensory impact on wine. Some aromatic heterocycles in 50 monovarietal wines aged from 1 to 27 years provided by Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin Champagne house were determined by the SPME-GC-MS method. The most interesting result highlighted a strong correlation between certain heterocycle concentrations and wine age. The second revealed a correlation between heterocyclic compound and free amino acid concentrations measured in the wines, suggesting that these compounds are potential aromatic precursors when wine is aged on lees and, thus, potential key compounds in the bouquet of aged Champagnes. The principal outcome of these assays was to reveal, for the first time, that aromatic heterocycle concentrations in Champagne base wines are correlated with wine age.