Volatile fingerprinting of the plum brandies produced from different fruit varieties

Nowadays, fingerprinting of food became one of the most perspective analytical tools to resolve a problem of food quality and authentication, especially in difficult cases like differentiation of fruit varieties. In this work, plum brandies distillated by the same technology from 25 plum cultivars were distinguished by comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatographic analysis and sensory evaluation. The number of identified compounds in studied samples varied between 91 and 195 depending on the plum variety. Enriched volatile organic compounds (VOC) profile was identified for the samples received from “Chrudimer”, “Cacak Fruitful” and “Hanita” plum varieties, whereas in the case of “Gabrovská”, “Presenta”, Elena” and “President” plum varieties, the VOC profile was significantly reduced. From qualitative point of view, the particular plum brandies showed differences in the presence of unsaturated fusel alcohols (e.g. 3-methyl-3-buten-1-ol, trans-3-hexenol), unsaturated aldehydes (2-butenal, 2-nonenal), monoterpene derivatives (e.g. linalool acetate, geraniol acetate) and lactones, which were mainly detected at the trace level.