Discrimination of sweet wines partially fermented by two osmo-ethanol-tolerant yeasts by gas chromatographic analysis and electronic nose

► Partial fermentation of dried grape must for elaboration of sweet wines. ► Selected osmo-ethanol tolerant yeasts Saccharomyces cerevisiae X4 and X5. ► Electronic nose data provide discrimination between fermented and unfermented musts. ► Discrimination of wines is obtained from the volatile compounds quantified by GC. Some special sweet wines are obtained by partial fermentation of musts from off-vine dried grapes containing large amounts of sugars. This process is very slow and subject to serious stop problems that can be avoided by using osmo-ethanol-tolerant yeasts. Musts containing 371g/l of sugars were partially fermented with selected Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains, X4 and X5, to 12% (v/v) and the wines obtained with X5 exhibited a higher volatile acidity but lower concentrations of higher alcohols, carbonyl compounds and polyols than those obtained with X4. A principal component analysis (PCA) of the data provided by an electronic nose (E-nose) afforded discrimination between fermented and unfermented musts, but not between wines obtained with X4 or X5. The PCA applied to the major volatile compounds and polyols shows similar results, but a clear discrimination between wines is obtained by removing the polyols glycerol and 2,3-butanediol from the PCA.