Wine lactone is a pleasant smelling compound found naturally in

apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor, ' ...

orange juice Orange juice is a liquid extract of the orange tree fruit, produced by squeezing or reaming oranges. It comes in several different varieties, including blood orange, navel oranges, valencia orange, clementine, and tangerine. As well as vari ...

grapefruit juice Grapefruit juice is the juice from grapefruits. It is rich in vitamin C and ranges from sweet-tart to very sour. Variations include white grapefruit, pink grapefruit and ruby red grapefruit juice.The World's Healthiest Foods; Grapefruit. ''The ...

, orange essential oil,

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peel oil and various grape

wine Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are m ...

s. It was first discovered as an essential oil metabolite in koala urine by Southwell in 1975. It was discovered several years later by Guth in white wines and was named "wine lactone". This monoterpene imparts "coconut, woody and sweet" odors to a wine. There are 8 possible isomers of wine lactone with the (3''S'', 3a ''S'', 7a''R'') isomer being the only one that has been found in wine. This isomer is also the most potent of all eight with an odor detection threshold of 10 ng/L in model wine. The odor threshold of the (3''S'',3a''S'',7a''R'')-wine lactone stereoisomer is 0.00001-0.00004 ng/L in air.

References

External links

Leffingwell website
lists a number of wine lactone variants, notably the 0.00001-0.00004 ng/L version with animated structures Food additives Gamma-lactones Wine chemistry Monoterpenes Sweet-smelling chemicals {{ingredient-stub