Occurrence of ochratoxin A (OTA) in wines: influence of the type of wine and its geographical origin

The results of more than 450 samples taken from the literature and 400 samp les tested by our own investigations have been taken into account to quite extensively describe the situation of OTA contamination of wine. According to these data OTA is much more commonly detected in red wines than in rose and white wines and the OTA concentration is remarkably higher than in the last two. Thus OTA could be detected in 25% of white wine samples whereas i t was detected in 40% of rose and 54% of red wine samples. The same result was found when comparing the wines from southern and northern regions. Here the red wine samples from the northern cultivating area showed a contamina tion of 12% in contrast to those from the southern area which showed a cont amination of about 95%.