The determination of biogenic amines in Turkish red wines

The enological importance of the biogenic amines in wines is due to their possible toxicological risks and the possibility of the relationship between high amine content and unsanitary conditions during wine production procedures. The aim of this work is to determine the biogenic amines profile of quality red Turkish wines by using high-performance liquid chromatography with pre-column derivatization and photodiode array detection. The levels of biogenic amines in Turkish red wines were investigated for the first time. In order to do this, 30 different red wines from four basic wine regions of Turkey (Thrace, Aegean, Central Anatolia and Eastern Anatolia) were analysed for their biogenic amine contents such as tryptamine, putrescine (PUT), histamine (HIST), phenylethylamine (PEA), tyramine (TYR), cadaverine (CAD), spermine (SPM), spermidine (SPD) and agmatine (AGM). Although the majority of the researchers have used and are still using o-phytaldialdehyde derivates in separation of these amines, we preferred to use dansyl chloride because of its stability in the UV-Visible detection system. We saw that amines suspected of having toxicological effects (HIST, TYR, and PEA) do not present any concern, as their amount does not exceed 2 mg/L: TYR ranged between 0 and 0.292 mg/L, HIST ranged between 0 and 1.965 mg/L and PEA ranged between 0 and 0.365 mg/L. However, tryptamine (another amine related with toxicological effect) yields variable results that ranged between 1.09 and 7.94 mg/L. The amines associated with deficient sanitary conditions (PUT and CAD) are generally in low amounts: 70% of those samples ranged between 0 and 0.5 mg/L, 16.6% ranged between 0.5 and 1 mg/L, with a maximum of 5.92 mg/L (Aegean) for CAD and 76.6% ranged between 0 and 0.5 mg/L, 6.6% ranged between 0.5 and 1.0 mg/L, 10% ranged between 1 and 2 mg/L with a maximum 3.943 mg/L. In the case of the other amines such as SPD and SPM, they also yielded a very low level: 0-2.186 mg/L for SPD and 0-1.748 for SPM. Only AGM yielded very variable results in our UV-Vis range (0-18.181).