Application of electronic nose in Chinese spirits quality control and flavour assessment

Chinese spirits have been classified according to their flavour types. The assessment has been performed by professional tasters, who could be subjective or even biased. We applied a portable electronic nose to objectively assess twenty most favourable and commercially available Chinese spirits. The responsive value obtained from electronic nose measurement provided strong evidence that sensor S1 (aromatic compounds, toluene), S3 (aromatic compounds, ammonia), S5 (alkenes, aromatic compounds), S6 (broad-methane), S7 (sulphur-organic) and S9 (aromatics compounds, sulphur-organic) could be applied to assess spirits. Principal component analysis and cluster analysis confirmed that S7 and S9 could identify Feng-flavour and Fougere-flavour, S6 could separate Laobaigan-flavour from others, and S1, S3, S5 could be applicable to Jiang, Strong, Mild, Zhima and Nong jiang-flavour. Furthermore, support vector machine offered greater capability in the separation of Jiang, Strong, Mild, Zhima and Nong jiang-flavour. Our data suggest that electronic nose could be applied as an objective tool for the Chinese spirits quality control and flavour assessment.