Sukhpreet Gill: Sulfur Sabotage Your Wine? HPLC-DAD Based Quantification of Elemental Sulfur in Grape Juice

<p dir="ltr">Elemental sulfur is commonly used in vineyards as a fungicide to prevent diseases and protect grapevines. The challenges of climate change are intensifying disease pressure, further increasing the reliance on sulfur use. Understanding the range of potential impacts of residual sulfur during the winemaking process is becoming increasingly important. For example, it is thought that sulfur residues can contribute to the formation of undesirable volatile sulfur compounds (VSCs) such as hydrogen sulfide (H2S), and methanethiol (MeSH), which negatively affect wine quality. Existing analytical methods to measure elemental sulfur in grape and wine samples are laborious and often require large volumes of samples. This study has developed a straightforward HPLC-DAD method for measuring elemental sulfur following a small-scale solvent-based extraction process. The method was subsequently employed to real juice samples across different grape varieties and vintages, revealing variable sulfur residues. This technique offers a practical and robust alternative to traditional sulfur detection methods and can be readily adopted in enology labs for quality control and research papers.</p>