ANALYSIS OF SOME HIGHLY VOLATILE COMPOUNDS OF WINE BY MEANS OF PURGE AND COLD TRAPPING INJECTOR CAPILLARY GAS-CHROMATOGRAPHY - APPLICATION TO THE DIFFERENTIATION OF RIAS-BAIXAS SPANISH WHITE WINES

An optimized method of purge and cold trapping injection-capillary gas chromatography was applied to the analysis of some volatile constitue nts of Galician (northwestern Spain) white wines with certified brand of origin ''Rias Baixas'' and other white wines produced in neighbor r egions in order to obtain their volatile profile. Identification of th e chromatographic peaks was performed by coupling an ion trap detector to the chromatograph. Characterization of Rias Baixas wines was perfo rmed applying nonsupervised and supervised multivariate techniques of analysis (cluster analysis, principal components analysis, K-nearest n eighbors). Thus, multivariate profiles of the wines were obtained, and certain differences between Rias Baixas wines and other Galician wine s could be observed. Some atypical wines in both categories were point ed out by the exploratory and classification methods.