The flavour of fruit spirits and fruit liqueurs: a review

Abstract

Fruit spirits and liqueurs are among the most popular spirit‐based beverages made from fruits such as plums, cherries, melon, apple, citrus and pear. The types of fruits and production methods have a great significance for the quality of the final product. The production process of spirits consists of the following stages: fermentation, distillation and maturation. For this reason scientists started to investigate the composition of fruit spirits and liqueurs in order to monitor the changes occurring in the production process and to control the content of selected compounds negatively affecting human health as well as compounds influencing the flavour and aroma of spirits. Furthermore, studies investigating the authenticity of the products and the identification of their botanical and geographical origin were performed. This article is a summarized description of fruit liqueurs and spirits produced from the above‐mentioned fruits and the characteristics of commonly used techniques for quality assessment of both types of product. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Authenticity Assessment of the “Onisiówka” Nalewka Liqueurs Using Two-Dimensional Gas Chromatography and Sensory Evaluation

“…Ester content in alcoholic beverages is also affected by maceration process and sensory properties of ingredients such as fruits or herbs used for production. For this reason, a large amount of esters are identified in various alcohol beverages made from fruits, such as fruit spirits, wines, cognacs, and liqueurs (Nikićević et al 2011;Welke et al 2014b;Śliwińska et al 2015). In general, esters of lower carboxylic acid and lower alcohols characterized with fruity sensory properties, for example, butyl acetate, ethyl pentanoate, ethyl hexanoate, hexyl acetate, ethyl 2-hydroxypropanoate, and ethyl octanoate.…”

“…The minimum content of alcohol is 15% v/v, and most frequently, liqueurs are colored by adding agricultural food products, such as caramel and honey. The most popular liqueurs are made of cherries, citrus, herbs, apples, and blackcurrants (Christoph and BauerChristoph 2006;Śliwińska et al 2015). Generally, these beverages are used as aperitif and are served in small glasses after the meal (Egea et al 2015).…”

Evaluation of the suitability of electronic nose based on fast GC for distinguishing between the plum spirits of different geographical origins

“…Fruit spirits cannot be artificially flavored [2]. The name of a given fruit spirit should contain the name of the fruit from which it has been made, e.g., cherry spirit, or "Kirsch," pear spirit, and plum spirit, or slivovitz [3].…”

“…The European countries such as Poland, the Slovak Republic, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Romania are the leading producers of this alcoholic beverage. Depending on the country of origin, plum spirit is known under different names, i.e., śliwowica (Poland), slivovice (the Czech Republic), tuica (Romania) and slivovica (the Slovak Republic) [3,4]. Regardless of the country of origin of plum spirit, its production consists of the following steps: washing and pitting of plums (due to the legal regulations on the content of ethyl carbamate, a carcinogen present in the plum pits, the pits have to be removed), mashing and Abstract Plum spirits are obtained exclusively via the alcoholic fermentation and distillation of meaty plums or must composed of plums, with or without stones.…”

“…Depending on the recipe, the obtained beverage is stored in glass containers or oak barrels for a period of time ranging from 2 to 5 years [5,6]. Additionally, in the final production stage, the plum spirit can be diluted with water to achieve the alcohol content in the range of 40-50 % [3,4].…”