Streamlined approach for careful and exhaustive aroma characterization of aged distilled liquors

Solvent-assisted flavor evaporation (SAFE) is considered to be the best overall method to produce a “clean” aroma extract to avoid the loss of labile aroma compounds or the formation of thermally generated artifacts during gas chromatographic (GC) analysis. However, SAFE is both time consuming and labor intensive, especially when applied repeatedly for quantitation by stable isotope dilution analysis (SIDA), which requires the addition of isotopes within specific mass ratio ranges relative to target analytes. The streamlined approach described herein allows for accurate quantitation of odor-active components in liquor products with a single SAFE operation. The quantitative results achieved by this method are nearly identical for most odor-active components, except for specific semi-volatile constituents not recovered well by SAFE (e.g., vanillin and syringaldehyde in oak-aged liquors). The streamlined approach provides a simple and convenient way to expedite the careful and exhaustive study of the flavor chemistry of aged liquors.