A proton nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)-based metabolomic study was used to characterize 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 vintages of Cabernet Sauvignon wines from Ningxia, which were vinified using the same fermentation technique. The pattern recognition methods of principal component analysis (PCA), partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), and orthogonal PLS-DA (OPLS-DA) clearly distinguished between the different vintages of wine driven by the following metabolites: valine,

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... ediol, ethyl acetate, proline, succinic acid, lactic acid, acetic acid, glycerol, gallic acid, and choline. The PLS-DA loading plots also differentiated among the metabolites of different vintages. In the 2009 vintage wines, we found the highest levels of gallic acid, valine, proline, and 2,3-butanediol. The 2011 vintage wines contained the highest levels of lactic acid, and the highest levels of ethyl acetate, succinic acid, glycerol, and choline were observed in the 2012 vintage wines. We selected eight metabolites from the 1H NMR spectra that were quantified according to their peak areas, and the concentrations were in agreement with the results of PLS-DA and OPLS-DA analyses.