Free and glycosylated simple phenol profiling in Apulian Italian wines

• On-line SPE pretreatment of wine samples.
• Targeted 61-phenol profile of two traditional Italian varieties.
• Untargeted characterisation of 24 new glycosylated precursors.
• Tentative identification of hexoside, pentoside and hexoside–hexoside derivatives.

Free simple phenols have a significant role in defining the sensory and nutritional characteristics of wines, affecting the organoleptic profile and having positive effects on health, but glycosidically bound phenols can also be hydrolysed during the winemaking process, releasing the corresponding volatile compounds and making a possible contribution to the final sensory profile.In this work, application of on-line SPE liquid chromatography–high resolution mass spectrometry, operating in negative polarity with heated electrospray, allowed to detect over eighty free and glycosylated simple phenols in Primitivo di Manduria and Negroamaro wines. Sixty-one phenols, four of which phenolic glucosidic precursors, were quantified as having quantification limits ranging from 0.001 to 0.1 μg mL−1, calibration R2 of 0.99 for over 92% of compounds, and precision (R.S.D.%) always lower than 12%. Twenty-four simple phenolic precursors were tentatively identified as hexoside, pentoside and hexoside–hexoside derivatives, on the basis of accurate mass, isotopic pattern and MS/MS fragmentation.