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Since prestige wines are among the most imitated and falsified products, the development of analytical methods for a suitable characterisation of the wines, identification of adulterations and establishment of wine origin is mandatory. On the other hand, control of the source of undesirable elements in wines, like lead, is important to guarantee wine quality to consumers. In this work the two relevant potentialities of the inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) technique, determination of elemental isotopic ratios and multi- element analysis, were applied to these problems. Future research work is still necessary to complement the information provided by the present study but main results showed the potentialities of ICP-MS to be used in the: (1) identification of major sources of lead in wine through lead isotope ratios; and (2) determination of the provenance of wines and detection/prevention of wine fraud through strontium isotopic ratio and/or wine multi-element composition. This study is a starting point to those interested in the protection of wine quality and of wine origin

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Marisa Almeida (born in 1974) got her PhD in Chemistry from Sciences Faculty, University of Porto, Portugal, working in the chemistry of wines. The protection of wines, namely wine origin denomination and identification of contaminants sources, were the aims. She is a researcher in CIIMAR since 2005.

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