DETERMINATION OF ORGANIC-ACIDS IN GRAPE MUSTS, WINES AND VINEGARS BY HIGH-PERFORMANCE LIQUID-CHROMATOGRAPHY

A method for the determination of tartaric, malic, shikimic, lactic, acetic, citric, succinic, citramalic and fumaric acid in musts, wines and vinegars is proposed, based on high-performance liquid chromatography using two 3-mu m C-18 columns (250 x 4.6 mm I.D.) in series, providing an efficiency between 50 000 and 80 000 theoretical plates/m. The mobile phase is phosphate buffer (pH 2.35) to which is added a small amount of methanol (3%) as polar modifier. The relative standard deviations were <6% and no effect of sample preparation (filtration and passage through Sep-Pak C-18) on the results was observed.