J. of Supercritical Fluids 61 (2012) 92–100 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect The Journal of Supercritical Fluids j ourna l ho me p ag e: www.elsevier.com/lo cate/supflu Supercritical CO 2 extraction applied toward the production of a functional beverage from wine Alejandro Ruiz-Rodríguez a , Tiziana Fornari a,∗ , Laura Jaime a , Erika Vázquez a , Beatriz Amador a , Juan Antonio Nieto a , María Yuste b , Mercè Mercader b , Guillermo Reglero a a Instituto de Investigación en Ciencias de la Alimentación CIAL (CSIC-UAM) C/Nicolás Cabrera 9, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 28049 Madrid, Spain b Bodegas Miguel Torres, Mas La Plana s/n, 08796 Pacs del Penedès, Spain a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 7 July 2011 Received in revised form 5 September 2011 Accepted 6 September 2011 Keywords: Supercritical CO2 extraction Non-alcoholic beverages Wine Aroma Antioxidant a b s t r a c t Supercritical CO 2 extraction has been proved to be a potential tool in the recovery of aroma compounds from different natural sources and in the removal of ethanol from aqueous solutions. In this work, both ideas are combined to develop a two-step process toward the production of a low-alcohol beverage from wine, but maintaining the aroma and the antioxidant activity similar to that of the original wine. First, the recovery of aroma from wine was attained in a countercurrent packed column (white and red wines were investigated) using very low CO 2 /wine ratios. Then, the aroma-free wine recovered from the bottom of the extraction column was dealcoholized by applying different extraction conditions. The results obtained from these studies permit the design of a two-step countercurrent CO 2 extraction process at 9.5 MPa and 313 K, in which the different CO 2 /wine ratios employed in each step lead to the recovery of aroma or the removal of ethanol. The two-step process was applied to rose wine and the low-alcohol beverage obtained proved to have similar antioxidant activity and similar aroma profile to that of the original wine. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Several drinks with low ethanol content or without ethanol have been introduced on the market in recent years. The increasing public consciousness about the abuse of alcohol together with the severe control of alcohol consumption in drivers have led more peo- ple to consume non-alcoholic drinks, and these drinks have gained significant sales percentages in the beverage industry. Wine is one of the most complex alcoholic beverages; more than 800 volatile organic compounds (acids, esters, alcohols, alde- hydes, lactones, terpenes, etc.) present in very low amounts were identified [1], which all together are responsible of each particu- lar bouquet. Therefore, the production of an alcohol-free wine by removing ethanol while preserving the organoleptic properties of wine is a very complex and challenging problem. In recent years, carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) extraction has been suggested as a promising alternative to the recovery of aroma compounds from natural matter [2–4]. On the other side, the removal of ethanol from aqueous solutions using high-pressure carbon dioxide has been comprehensively studied [5–7] and thus, supercritical fluid extraction has appear as a promising alterna- tive to other conventional dealcoholization of beverages techniques ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +34 661514186. E-mail address: tiziana.fornari@uam.es (T. Fornari). [8–10], such as distillation [11,12], inverse osmosis [13–15] or membrane contactor [16]. All these techniques have the disadvan- tage of eliminating the beverage aromas together with ethanol, but still, among them, supercritical CO 2 extraction is particularly attractive because water, salts, proteins and carbohydrates are not substantially removed or denatured [9]. In a European patent for producing alcohol-free wine [17], a supercritical CO 2 extraction is at first employed to recover aroma compounds and then, the ethanol from the raffinate is separated in a subsequent distillation column. Mixing the extracted aroma compounds into the bottom product of distillation, alcohol-free wine can be produced. Another European patent [18] describes a process in which the ethanol and aroma are removed in a first distillation step. Then, aroma compounds are extracted from the distillate using supercritical CO 2 and are recycled to the bottom product of the distillation to obtain an alcohol-free wine product. In a previous contribution [19] the authors developed a model to simulate the countercurrent supercritical CO 2 removal of ethanol from alcoholic beverages (brandy, wine, and cider) using the GC- EoS. The results obtained compared good with experimental data from the literature and thus, the model was used to estimate pro- cess conditions to achieve an ethanol content reduction from ca. 10 wt% to values lower than 1 wt%. In this work, supercritical CO 2 technology was employed to produce a low-ethanol content beverage from wine by combining two different countercurrent extraction steps. In the first step, the 0896-8446/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.supflu.2011.09.002