An Authentication Study on Grappa Spirit: The Use of Chemometrics to Detect a Food Fraud

An authenticity study on Italian grape marc spirit was carried out by gas chromatography (GC) and chemometrics. A produced in Italy takes the particular name of “grappa”, a product which has peculiar tradition production its country origin. Therefore, evaluation plays an important role for consumption Italy, as well exportation all around world. For present work, 123 samples grappa several kinds spirits were analyzed their alcohol content electronic densimetry, volatile fraction gas-chromatography with flame-ionization detector. Part these (94) employed training set to compute chemometric model (by linear discriminant analysis, LDA) other part (29 samples) used test validate it. Finally, two seized from market Customs Monopolies Agency considered suspicious due aroma reported non-compliant projected onto LDA evaluate compliance “grappa” class. further one-class classification method principal component analysis (PCA) classes. Results showed that not recognized belonging any classes, confirming starting hypothesis they could be adulterated some way.