Several American whiskeys are specifically defined in US law. Among them Rye (51% rye) and Bourbon (51% corn) whiskeys are distinguished only by their mashbills—in all other prescribed production aspects they are the same. In the public opinion these whiskeys are extremely distinct: Rye whiskeys are commonly described with terms like “herbal”, “bitter”, and “jangly”, in contrast with Bourbons, described as “sweet”, “rounded”, “luxurious”. Despite the economic importance of these distinctions—American whiskeys are now a $2.6 billion industry segment, and many labels have introduced or begun promoting existing Ryes as a new segment—there is little published research on the flavor chemistry or sensory analysis of these products. The current research comprises analysis of a representative sample of American whiskeys (P = 24, 10 Ryes and 14 Bourbons) by Descriptive Analysis (DA) and Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS). For DA, subjects (N = 11) developed a sensory lexicon for these products in 10, 1-hour training sessions, and then analyzed the whiskeys for 24 sensory attributes in triplicate under standard sensory-analysis conditions. Both sensory and volatile data were analyzed by Barycentric Discriminant Analysis (BADA) to determine whether either type of data could predict Rye or Bourbon category membership. Group membership could not be predicted by BADA based on either descriptive analysis or volatile chemistry. The two datasets were integrated through barycentric projection, and sensory and volatile profiles of the whiskey were examined; overall, company-of-origin seemed to predict whiskey sensory and volatile profiles better than mashbill. Therefore, we conclude that, contrary to public opinion, mashbill cannot be responsible for the majority of sensory attributes found in this set of American whiskeys. We discuss these results and present some directions for future research.

Sensory and volatile analysis of American whiskeys with different mashbills: Can we discriminate rye and bourbon whiskeys?

255th National Meeting (2018)

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