Internal standardization--atomic spectrometry and geographical pattern recognition techniques for the multielement analysis and classification of Catalonian red wines.

Major and minor (K, P, Ca, Mg, Na, Fe, Mn, Zn, and Sr) and trace (Ba, Ni, Pb, V, Co, Cd, and Sb) elements from wine samples from the Denomination of Origin (DO) Empordà-Costa Brava (Catalonia, Spain) were analyzed by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES) and mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) respectively. Previously, a comparison of different calibration methodologies and sample digestion treatments had been carried out using ANOVA statistical tool. The obtained results demonstrated that internal standardization provides reliable results with the advantage that no further manipulation of the sample is needed. A principal component analysis of the concentration data was performed to differentiate the samples of DO Empordà-Costa Brava from wine samples from other wine-producing regions in Spain (i.e., Penedès, Somontano, and Rioja). It was found that Sr and Ba contents discriminate the two DO groups. Moreover, a discriminant analysis function involving both variables distinguishes the two groups with a 100% classification rate. At the level of the leave-one-out cross-validation, all of the Empordà-Costa Brava samples were well classified, whereas the other DOs presented two borderline misclassifications.