Application of electronic tongue for quantitative analysis of mineral water and wine

An electronic tongue comprising 29 potentiometric chemical sensors and patt ern recognition tools for the data processing has been applied for the anal ysis of Italian produced mineral waters and dry red wines. The electronic t ongue appeared to be capable to distinguish between different sorts of mine ral waters, between contaminated by organic matter waters and pure ones and between Barbera wine samples of the same denomination but from different v ineyards. Simultaneously with qualitative recognition, quantitative determi nation of some components in the water and the wine has been performed. The electronic tongue can be highly valuable in food quality control.