Application of characteristic vector analysis to multianalyser tensiography for the study of aqueous-ethanol solutions and french wine solutions

A study was conducted to determine the alcohol concentration, refractive index and surface tension of binary solutions from multianalyser tensiotrace data. Characteristic vector analysis of multivariate response data has been successfully applied to a variety of optical tensiotraces to explore the quantitative capabilities of the multianalyser tensiograph. Singular value decomposition was used to determine the key vector i.e. the characteristics of the required signal as it affects the data. This vector is then optimised using the known established data to estimate the value of the unknown parameters. By the use of characteristic vector analysis the paper explores the relationship that exists between the tensiotrace features and the physical properties of a liquid. This paper shows the possibility of future work for identifying wines. A second study has been conducted where five wine samples were run on the multianalyser and their tensiotraces acquired. This preliminary study demonstrates that wine archiving and fingerprinting is possible.