Characteristic Phenolic Composition of Single-Cultivar Red Wines of the Canary Islands (Spain)

The detailed phenolic composition of five single-cultivar (Baboso Negro, Listán Negro, Negramoll, Tintilla, and Vijariego Negro) young and aged (vintages 2005–2009) red wines of the Canary Islands has been determined by HPLC-DAD-ESI-MSn. Despite the total monomeric anthocyanin content decreasing for older wines in each set of single-cultivar wines, the corresponding anthocyanin profiles remained almost unchanged. Although all wine anthocyanin profiles were dominated by malvidin 3-glucoside, their differentiation by grape cultivar was possible, with the exception of Listán Negro. In contrast, the total content of non-anthocyanin phenolics did not appreciably change within vintages but polymerization, hydrolysis, and isomerization reactions greatly modified the phenolic profiles. Aglycone-type flavonol profiles offered the best results for differentiation of the wines according to grape cultivar (Listán Negro and Negramoll; Baboso Negro and Vijariego Negro; and Tintilla). Within flavan-3-ols, the B-ring trihydroxylated monomers ((−)-epigallocatechin and (−)-gallocatechin) and also (−)-epicatechin provided additional cultivar differentiation. Hydroxycinnamic acid derivatives and stilbene profiles were very heterogeneous with regard to both grape cultivar and vintage and did not significantly contribute to wine differentiation, even when structure-type profiles were obtained, with the exception of Tintilla, which always appeared as the most different single-cultivar wines. Finally, most Canary Islands wines showed characteristic high contents of stilbenes, especially trans-resveratrol.