Collaborative Study of the Determination of Ethanol in Wine by Chemical Oxidation

Abstract

Abstract A collaborative study was conducted on a chemical or dichromate oxidation procedure for etlianol in wine. The method is based on the steam distillation of ethanol from a 1 ml wine sample into an acidified solution of potassium dichromate, followed by heating 20 min at 60°C to complete the oxidation of the ethanol to acetic acid. The unreacted dichromate is determined by titration with a standard ferrous ammonium sulfate solution, using o-phenanthroline as an indicator. Eleven collaborators participated in the study, of whom seven were familiar with the method and four were not. Eight samples with alcohol content ranging from 11.8 to 23.5% by volume were analyzed. The standard deviations of the reported answers on the identical samples varied from 0.024 to 0.063% in the range of 11.8–20% ethanol and rose to 0,161% in the sample which contained 23.3% ethanol by volume. This reproducibility is better than has been reported with other commonly used methods, and it is recommended that the method be adopted as official first action.