Robust, automated quantitation of proline in wine

Flynn T Watson; Don Teng; Keren Bindon; Stella Kassara; Natoiya D R Lloyd; William S Price; Allan Torres; Mathias Nilsson; Markus J Herderich; Damian Espinase Nandorfy

doi:10.1016/j.foodchem.2025.145386

Robust, automated quantitation of proline in wine

Food Chem. 2025 Nov 30;493(Pt 1):145386. doi: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2025.145386. Epub 2025 Jul 3.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ The Australian Wine Research Institute, PO Box 46, Glenside, SA 5065, Australia; Metabolomics Australia, PO Box 46, Glenside, SA 5065, Australia; Nanoscale Organisation and Dynamics Group, School of Science, Western Sydney University, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith, NSW 2751, Australia. Electronic address: flynn.watson@awri.com.au.
² The Australian Wine Research Institute, PO Box 46, Glenside, SA 5065, Australia; Metabolomics Australia, PO Box 46, Glenside, SA 5065, Australia.
³ The Australian Wine Research Institute, PO Box 46, Glenside, SA 5065, Australia.
⁴ Nanoscale Organisation and Dynamics Group, School of Science, Western Sydney University, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith, NSW 2751, Australia.
⁵ Department of Chemistry, The University of Manchester, Oxford Rd, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom.
⁶ The Australian Wine Research Institute, PO Box 46, Glenside, SA 5065, Australia; Discipline of Wine Science and Waite Research Institute, The University of Adelaide, Glen Osmond, SA 5064, Australia.
⁷ The Australian Wine Research Institute, PO Box 46, Glenside, SA 5065, Australia; Department of Sport, Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, Discipline of Food, Nutrition and Dietetics, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Vic 3086, Australia.

PMID: 40753749
DOI: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2025.145386

Abstract

Proline is an abundant wine metabolite shown to impart sweetness, viscosity, and increase flavour intensity. While several techniques are available to quantitate proline in wine, they are either costly, laborious, or prone to severe interferences. Proton nuclear magnetic resonance (¹H NMR) analysis of wine has provided a method for rapidly measuring several important wine metabolites, including proline. In this paper, we present a method for the automated quantitative measurement of proline by ¹H NMR. In the thousand wine samples analysed, the majority (84.9%) were processed automatically, with the remainder requiring visual assessment by the analyst using a parallel workflow. Repeatability of the NMR method was shown to be excellent in achieving intraday and interday coefficients of variation of less than 1.2%. Additionally, the approach significantly reduced analyst time requirements and increased reliability and repeatability across a wide range of concentrations and wine styles. The workflow is freely available at https://github.com/AWRIMetabolomics/nmr-pro-quant.

Keywords: Method comparison; Nuclear magnetic resonance; Proline quantitation; Wine.

Publication types

Evaluation Study

MeSH terms

Automation
Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy / methods
Proline* / analysis
Wine* / analysis

Substances

Proline