In March 2018, Fera Science launched the world’s most thorough wine proficiency testing scheme, to meet the industry demands for a solution that will help ensure consistency of wine production year-on-year.
Proficiency testing provider Fapas, part of Fera Science, established the Wine Proficiency Testing Programme in partnership with Italian wine laboratory Isvea srl and Fera’s agent in Italy, StarEcotronics.
With a full year of testing in the bag and significant customer feedback, Fapas have now refined their programme of wine proficiency tests to give customers’ a wider choice of different analytes to suit their requirements.
Now available are two sets of analytes, primary and secondary, the Fapas’ new primary test presents the wine quality indicators that the majority of wine testing laboratories will typically analyse for. The secondary wine quality indicators test is provided in combination with our primary test. This set of parameters will apply more to large-scale wineries, third-party testing laboratories or major wine testing laboratories, including official control laboratories and reference laboratories, where assessing wine quality in large quantities requires an extensive amount of analysis. This can include a range of metals analysis, as well as nutritional elements, alcohol levels and congeners.
The continued consumption of wine across the globe has resulted in fierce competition between wine producers, with quality continuing to be a deciding factor of economic success. As a result, your testing ability across quality indicators provides valuable data for your customers when meeting their key strategic objectives. These new proficiency tests enables winery laboratories to analyse their clients’ products more thoroughly and have greater confidence in their measurements.
What will the testing programme involve?
The proficiency test will last four weeks and will include well known analytes that commonly appear on the labels of bottles, such as alcohol level and whether the wine contains sulphates, as well as other important indicators such as the presence of heavy metals, organic acids, pH level and overall acidity.
The process involves samples of wine being sent to registered laboratories so that they can perform their analysis. The laboratories will then send their results to Fapas, which will analyse the data and generate reports to provide laboratories with an in-depth evaluation of how well they have performed. With this insight, laboratories can investigate the success of the methods they have employed and carry out necessary adjustments.
The global wine market is also anticipated to grow steadily during the next four years and will reach a global consumption of more than 30 billion litres by 2020 (Source). Key drivers include a renaissance in Chinese wine consumption and other Asian countries such as Vietnam, Malaysia and India, where sales are expected to grow by double-digits across this period. In mature European markets such as Italy, Millennials are also helping to shape new wine drinking habits, for example by enthusiastically embracing sparkling wines.
With the prospect of greater consumption of wine across a wider selection, Fapas’ wider wine proficiency testing programme will help meet the growing demand for advanced and rapid testing services across global markets.
For more information on our wine proficiency tests (PTs), please get in touch or click the links below for specific test information.
New primary wine proficiency tests
New secondary wine proficiency tests
