Influence of Vintage on Cu, Fe, Zn and Pb Content in Some Croatian Red Wines

Abstract

Knowledge of the content of heavy metals is important because of their impact on the wine stability or on the health of the consumers. The presence of heavy metals in wines is a consequence of an action of various factors such as conditions of the cultivation and processing of grapes and production, stabilisation or storage of wine. In this work determination of heavy metals (Cu, Fe, Zn and Pb) content in red wines was carried out. Selected wine was Plavac mali, Croatian autochthonous sort, produced by various producers during the three consecutive vintages. The aim of this work was to examine whether the wines produced in different vintage, and by various producers, vary according to the content of heavy metals. For the determination of heavy metals content, the atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS) was used. Content of heavy metals ranged between 0.235–1.122 mg Cu/l, 0.809–6.202 mg Fe/l, 0.266–2.434 mg Zn/l and 0.107–0.3355 mg Pb/l. Data analysis showed statistically significant differences only between producers for iron and copper content.