Abstract
Whiskey is one of the most widely consumed alcoholic beverages in the world. This large and lucrative market is a constant target for adulteration and the most varied methods, from changing or modifying labels and simple water additions, to completely counterfeiting the beverage, using the most diverse chemicals that are mostly toxic and dangerous to human health. Thus, various techniques are used and methods are developed for the analysis of any suspected whiskey samples in order to identify possible adulteration and aid justice. Most techniques are aimed at analyzing congeners and ethanol concentrations in whiskey. The use of statistical methods for the treatment of the data generated by the analytical equipment allows a faster analysis, besides being able to catalogue the samples. The objective of this review article was to identify the main adulterations and to search in the recent scientific literature the most used techniques for the analysis of whiskies. In general, congeneric analysis is done by spectroscopic and chromatographic methods. Colorimetric methods are used to quantify ethanol or caramel colorant concentrations. Some techniques dispense with sample dilution or sample preparation, and the sample can be analyzed directly from the bottle, reducing cost and time. The recently developed methods have proven to be very useful for analysis; moreover, the technological advance of techniques and methods has been achieving one of the main objectives in the development of new analytical methods: speed, reliability and low cost.