Qualitative characteristics and comparison of volatile fraction of vodkas made from different botanical materials by comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography and the electronic nose based on the technology of ultra-fast gas chromatography.

BACKGROUND

Vodka is a spirit-based beverage made from ethyl alcohol of agricultural origin. At present, increasingly more vodka brands have labels that specify the botanical origin of the product. Until now, the techniques for distinguishing between vodkas of different botanical origin have been costly, time-consuming and insufficient for making a distinction between vodka produced from similar raw materials. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to find a fast and relatively inexpensive technique for conducting such tests.

RESULTS

In the present study, we employed comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography (GC×GC) and an electronic nose based on the technology of ultra-fast GC with chemometric methods such as partial least square discriminant analysis, discriminant function analysis and soft independent modeling of class analogy.

CONCLUSION

Both techniques allow a distinction between the vodkas produced from different raw materials. In the case of GC×GC, the differences between vodkas were more noticeable than in the analysis by electronic nose; however, the electronic nose allowed the significantly faster analysis of vodkas. © 2016 Society of Chemical Industry.