Preliminary study of the application of Principal Components Analysis (PCA) to the determination of the origin of brandy type vodka

Principal Components Analysis (PCA) was applied to the determination of the origin of samples of vodkas. Analytical parameters used were: the alcoholic degree, the difference between the alcoholic experimental degree and declared in the etiquette, the dried extract, the relative intensities of calcium atomic emission (beak area at 422,67 nm), sodium (sum of beaks areas Ca, Na / 588,99 and 589,59 nm) and potassium (sum of beaks areas to K/766,49 nm and 769,89 nm) and finally the ultraviolet absorbency to 200 nm. The accumulation of K-averages was used. The hypothesis of item is that the sample was constituted, approximately, for two big natural groupings, this is, national vodkas and foreign vodkas. Of the application of the above mentioned procedure there was obtained that really the components of the sample were distinguishable according to the national or foreign origin in two groups, which ellipses of confidence to 95 % not achieving , even if there were eliminated the variables of alcoholic degree and difference of the alcoholic degree. (author)