Review:: Ochratoxin A (OTA) in wines, musts and grape juices:: Occurrence, regulations and methods of analysis

This work gives a general overview of ochratoxin A (OTA) occurrence in wines and the methodology for OTA analysis. The results of more than two thousand samples taken from the literature have been taken into account to quite extensively describe the present situation of OTA contamination of wine. According to these data, OTA is much more commonly detected in red wines than in rose and white wines, and OTA concentration is remarkably higher than in the latter ones. Thus OTA could be detected in 45% (median 34%) of white wine samples, whereas it was detected in 66% (median 66%) of rose and 71% (median 90%) of red wine samples. When comparing the wines from Northern and Southern regions, the latter showed a higher contamination than those from the Northern area. It has been suggested that OTA accumulation could be due to fungi belonging to the genus Aspergillus in wines from Southern European countries because the crops are exposed to elevated temperatures, which favour growth of OTA-producing Aspergillus species over Penicillium. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) associated with fluorescence detection preceded by extraction of OTA using commercially available immunoaffinity columns (IAC) is currently the most applied method for OTA determination in wines.