Chemistry Seminar: Dr Timothy Connell

Abstract

Synthetic organic chemistry and modern analytical instrumentation and techniques are important tools that can support the food and beverage industry. This is especially true for wine chemists who aim to untangle the compositional and technological complexities of wine to improve scientific understanding and drive innovation in the industry.

We contribute to this by investigating aspects from the vineyard to the winery that focus on compositional drivers of wine quality, which ultimately flow on to consumer acceptance and contribute to the competitiveness of the multi-billion dollar Australian wine industry in a global market.

Much of our work focuses on wine aroma and flavour, and spans from natural product isolation and identification to synthesis of authentic standards and development of analytical methods. Although awesome in their own right, the real power lies in the application of these capabilities to various research questions involving the production of grapes and wines, and some examples from our work will be presented.