Aroma profile of Portuguese brandies aged in chestnut and oak woods

Much research has been made on the physico-chemical composition of brandies aged in oak wood but few sensorial data are available on brandies aged in oak wood and there is no sensorial data on brandies aged in chestnut wood. In the present work a panel of tasters evaluated the aroma attributes of a Portuguese Lourinha brandy, after 4 years of ageing. The taster panel generated the I I aroma descriptors and the brandies were evaluated based on those descriptors, with a structured scale. A two factorial experiment (7 woods x 3 toasting levels x 3 replicates) was used to compare the brandies aged in barrels made from seven different woods and each wood was submitted to three levels of toasting: light, medium and strong, with three replicates of each essay. The analysis of variance showed significant differences between the brandies aged in the seven different woods, concerning the intensities of vanilla, woody, caramel, burned, green, tails, glue and caoutchouc. The highest intensities of caramel and burned were found in the brandies aged in chestnut wood. The toasting level of the barrels had a significant effect on the majority of the aroma descriptors, namely fruity, vanilla, woody, spicy, caramel, burned, smoke, green, tails and glue. In fact, the brandies aged on strong toasted barrels presented the highest intensities of vanilla, woody, spicy, caramel, burned, smoke and the lowest intensities of fruity, green, tails and glue. According to our previous results, this work pointed out the interesting sensorial properties of the brandies aged in chestnut, and thus shows the possibility of the use of this wood on the brandies' ageing. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.