Can spectroscopy geographically classify Sauvignon Blanc wines from Australia and New Zealand?

► Combination of infrared and chemometrics opens the possibility to discriminate between Australian and New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. ► This type of method used by the wine industry will guarantee the provenance of the wines to the consumers. ► This method will also help to study and understand the effect of climate change on grape and wine production. The combination of UV, visible (Vis), near-infrared (NIR) and mid-infrared (MIR) spectroscopy with multivariate data analysis was explored as a tool to classify commercial Sauvignon Blanc (Vitis vinifera L., var. Sauvignon Blanc) wines from Australia and New Zealand. Wines (n=64) were analysed in transmission using UV, Vis, NIR and MIR regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Principal component analysis (PCA), soft independent modelling of class analogy (SIMCA) and partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) were used to classify Sauvignon Blanc wines according to their geographical origin using full cross validation (leave-one-out) as a validation method. Overall PLS-DA models correctly classified 86% of the wines from New Zealand and 73%, 86% and 93% of the Australian wines using NIR, MIR and the concatenation of NIR and MIR, respectively. Misclassified Australian wines were those sourced from the Adelaide Hills of South Australia. These results demonstrate the potential of combining spectroscopy with chemometrics data analysis techniques as a rapid method to classify Sauvignon Blanc wines according to their geographical origin.