| Abstract
| - Interest in high-quality and peculiar products is a recent trend in the enological field; for this reason,production of wines from autochthonous vine varieties is requested by consumers. Aglianico winefrom the Italian region “Basilicata” is an example of a promising product strictly connected to theterritory; nevertheless, it is affected by a frequent sweet-like off-flavor. In this study the compositionalcause of this off-flavor was investigated by SPME-GC−olfactometry, SPME-GC-MS, and sensorytests. Ethyl phenylacetate (EPhA) was found to be the compound mainly responsible, and its sensorythreshold was determined near 73 μg/L; products with the odorant concentration near and up tothese values were always recognized as significantly different from the other wines and were oftenfar from wine technical pleasantness; besides EPhA gave to the wines a strong honey-like character.Some preliminary hypotheses about its mechanism of formation (shikimate pathway) are presentedin this study: these hypotheses could explain the correlation between EPhA and volatile phenolsthat was found by both sensory tests and GC quantitative analysis of wines affected by differentlevels of defect. Keywords: Sensory analysis; sensory threshold; SPME-GC-O; SPME-GC-MS; compositional cause
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