A New Study Reveals What Gives Whisky Mango Flavor
Have you ever sipped a fine single malt scotch and thought to yourself, “Hmm, this kind of tastes like tropical fruit—specifically mango?” If you have detected tropical fruit notes in your whisky before, particularly in single malt scotch and Irish whiskey, you’re not crazy—a new study has come out that reveals exactly where those tasting notes come from.
The study was conducted by Heriot Watt, a university located in Edinburgh, Scotland. According to a press release issued earlier this week, university researchers working with the Japanese drinks company Kirin (which used to own Four Roses before selling it to E & J Gallo) have come across the exact compounds that give whisky a mango-like flavor. Tropical fruit notes are nothing new to seasoned whisky drinkers, the result of the yeast strain that is used for the fermentation process that often become much more noticeable after a whisky has aged for several decades. “Fruity notes like banana, apple, and pear have long been linked to esters, which are produced during fermentation,” said Annie Hill, a professor at Heriot-Watt’s International Center for Brewing and Distilling, in a statement. “But we didn’t know where the mango flavor was coming from—and now we do.”
The research was reported in the Journal of the American Society of Brewing Chemists (JASBC) last year, but Heriot Watt only issued its press release about the findings earlier this week. It said that PhD student Takehiko Hiura analyzed 14 different whiskies from Scotland and Ireland, and discovered that a pair of compounds which are often found in whisky, aldehydes and acetals, will amplify tropical fruit notes. One whisky among the samples had particularly high levels of three compounds—isobutyraldehyde, isovaleraldehyde, and isovaleraldehyde diethyl acetal—and increasing these three in a whisky low in fruit flavor raised the levels of mango aroma specifically.
According to the ICBD’s Dr. Calum Holmes, the aldehydes and acetals that contribute tropical fruit flavors are already well understood, but this research means that distilleries and producers may have another tool in their kits when it comes to creating a certain type of whisky. In other words, if you want a fruitier single malt or Irish pot still whiskey, there might be a way to do this organically without adding any flavoring or additives (which would not be allowed anyway according to the legal guidelines that define scotch whisky). “The volatile compounds identified in the present trial as contributing to mango-type aroma in mature whisky products are not newly identified in whisky, and known mechanisms of control for these volatiles exist within common industrial process steps,” wrote the authors. “It is therefore likely that distillers wishing to increase or decrease the novel mango/tropical aroma trait in their products already possess the tools to do so within current distillery practices.” Sounds like there could be a Mango Madness Malt Whisky in our near future.
