LC-MS Identification of Rare Ethyl Esters in Botrytized Wines

The Tokaj region is one of the oldest and most famous European wine regions, located in two neighboring countries, Hungary and Slovakia, both of which are famous for their production of high-quality botrytized wines. Unfortunately, no analysis aimed at the identification of the most abundant monoethyl esters present in this type of wine has yet been made. In this paper, we present the LC-MS identification of the most abundant monoethyl esters of the common dicarboxylic aliphatic and phenolic acids in the botrytized Slovak and Hungarian wines, as well as the Slovak varietal wines, produced in the Tokaj wine region. French botrytized wines, produced in the Sauternes region, were also included in this study. Among the identified compounds, the unique esters, namely conjugates of tartaric acids and derivatives of cinnamic acid, were identified. The identification was based on the detection of the respective parent and product ions. Since the reports on the identification of the analyzed ethyl esters in wines are rare, their fragmentation pathways, including those of the identified isomers, were discussed in detail. Similar relative amounts of some of the identified unique esters in botrytized wines offer the potential of using these compounds as authenticity markers for this type of wine.