Evaluation of antioxidant power of wine: the wine antioxidant test (wat)

Recent studies address a central issue in modern enology: the management of must and wine oxidability at the most delicate stages of winemaking. Product quality control now requires rapid and reliable analytical methods, especially to assess oxidation, an area where adequate solutions have been lacking until now.

We now have a concrete answer to this need: the WAT kit – Wine Antioxidant Test. It represents a rapid, reliable and easily integrated system in the daily quality control process of wineries and laboratories. Developed by DNAPhone Srl in collaboration with H&D Srl, the kit combines industrial and technological expertise in designing advanced analytical solutions.

Using WAT, researchers from the Department of Agricultural, Food, Environmental and Forestry Sciences and Technologies (DAGRI) at the University of Florence evaluated how the extraction of phenolic compounds and the grape fermentation process affect the redox state and final color of wine. The analyses show that the WAT kit proved to be a fundamental tool for understanding and anticipating oxidative phenomena, thus improving wine stability and supporting fundamental technical decisions such as antioxidant dosage or management of maceration timing.

The test is thus proposed as a new decision-making approach that is simpler and more straightforward than traditional methods such as DPPH, FRAP and ABTS, which require advanced chemical skills and laboratory instrumentation.