Characterization of aniseed-flavoured spirit drinks by headspace solid-phase microextraction gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and chemometrics.

The volatile composition of aniseed-flavoured spirit drinks was studied by headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) coupled with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The influence of the time, temperature, volume of sample and ionic strength on the extraction were considered. Several aniseed-flavoured spirit drinks, such as pastis, sambuca, anis and raki were analyzed. The major compounds found were trans-anethole (41.22-98%), cis-anethole (0.77-18.65%) and estragole (0.1-17.96%). gamma-Himachalene (0-28.07%) and alpha-himachalene (0-4.8%) were also present in anis and raki beverages. The compounds determined were used as chemical descriptors to differentiate the four types of beverages considered. Principal component analysis (PCA), linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and artificial neural networks (ANN) were used as chemometric tools for characterization purposes.