On-line monitoring of oxygen as a method to qualify the oxygen consumption rate of wines

- The kinetics of oxygen consumption by red and white wines are evaluated.
- A new model kinetics is proposed improving the widely accepted one.
- Oxygen Consumption Rate Index (OCRI) of wines is proposed.
- Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is used to predict OCRI.
- ANN uses only basic chemical composition commonly used in wineries.

Measuring the oxygen content during winemaking and bottle storage has become increasingly popular due to its impact on the sensory quality and longevity of wines. Nevertheless, only a few attempts to describe the kinetics of oxygen consumption based on the chemical composition of wines have been published. Therefore, this study proposes firstly a new fitting approach describing oxygen consuming kinetics and secondly the use of an Artificial Neural Network approach to describe and compare the oxygen avidity of wines according to their basic chemical composition (i.e. the content of ethanol, titratable acidity, total sulfur dioxide, total phenolics, iron and copper). The results showed no significant differences in the oxygen consumption rate between white and red wines, and allowed the sorting of the wines studied according to their oxygen consumption rate.