Quality control of mezcal combining multivariate analysis techniques and Raman spectroscopy

A fast method to discriminate between mezcal samples with different aging times was proposed using Raman spectroscopy and multivariate analysis techniques. The multivariate analysis were performed using Principal component analysis (PCA) and Partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA). The first principal component separates the matured aged mezcal (rested and aged) while the second principal component separates the non-matured from the matured mezcal. PLS-DA was chosen as supervised classifier to predict the belonging of unlabeled spectra to one of aging classes. The results demonstrated that Raman spectroscopy in combination with multivariate analysis could be used as fast method for discrimination between matured mezcal with different aging time.