The presence of biogenic amines in foods and more particularly in wines is of current interest due to their pharmacological properties and the physiological disorders they may provoke in the human organism. Although at present compounds like histamine or cadaverine can be analyzed with precision in wine, less information is provided on the possible presence of spermine and spermidine. Using fluorenylmethylchloroformate (FMOC) as derivatization reagent we were able to determine these compounds in wines simultaneously with other biogenic amines such as histamine, tyramine, phenylethylamine, putrescine, agmatine, cadaverine, and precursor amino acids of these compounds, in their free state in wine: arginine, ornithine, histidine, phenylalanine, and tyrosine. Samples of 54 red wines, 15 rose wines and 15 white wines from the Vallee du Rhone (France), all bottled and commercialized, have been analyzed by this method. The polyamines cadaverine, spermine and spermidine are present in small quantities in these wines. Only agmatine and putrescine appear at levels significantly higher than 1 mg/l. The presence of putrescine is strongly correlated to that of its precursors arginine, ornithine and agmatine, as well as with the presence of tyramine and histamine. On the other hand, no correlation (threshold of 5%) was found between the levels of phenylethylamine, tyramine and histamine, and those of their free precursor amino acids in the wine, phenylalanine, tyrosine and histidine. Levels of putrescine, agmatine, histamine, tyramine, spermine, spermidine are higher in red wines than in the other types of wine.
