Analytical strategies combining multi-elemental isotopic dilution with external calibration for rapid and precise inorganic wine profiling by ICP-QQQ-MS: high geographic discrimination for improved wine management and traceability

Quality assessment in wine often relates to certainty of geographical origin. A large array of multi-elemental approaches has been developed in this sense. This paper presents a new method based on combined multi-elemental isotopic dilution (MID) and external calibration for the determination of 23 elements (characteristic of the soils, agricultural practices and anthropogenic contaminations) by ICP-QQQ-MS. First, the ICP-MS operating parameters were optimized. Then, the improvements brought by MID compared to external calibration were evaluated. The method, combined to six different multivariate statistical treatments, was finally used to analyze samples originating from the three hills of the DOC Jurançon from the South-West region of France covering a very small geographical area of about only 1000 ha. Depending on the statistics applied, the discrimination between the hills could be achieved with a mean accuracy of 100%.