Overview
The authors measured 21 elements by ICP-MS in South African commercial brandies and in the unaged pot still and neutral wine spirits blended to make them, mainly to explore copper and other metals as authenticity markers. Commercial brandies had significantly higher levels of most metals than the unaged spirits, which the authors attribute to wood ageing. Concentrations are given as ranges in the text; means appear only in a figure.
Key numbers
- Lead: 0 to 47.673 µg/L in commercial brandy, 0 to 0.377 µg/L in neutral wine spirit, 0 to 9.016 µg/L in pot still spirit (p. 40).
- Cadmium: 0 to 0.588 µg/L in commercial brandy (p. 40).
- Arsenic: not detected in commercial brandy; up to 22.498 µg/L in pot still spirit (p. 41).
- Copper maximum: 8598.480 µg/L in pot still spirit (p. 37).
Methods (brief)
Spirits were diluted 10 to 24 times and analyzed by quadrupole ICP-MS in helium collision mode with online internal standards (recovery 90 to 110%) and NIST-traceable calibration. Detection limits are listed per element but without a unit. No certified reference material was used.
Evidence Fitness
A large sample set (101 spirits) but only ranges are printed; means are figure-only and Table 1 gives intakes rather than concentrations. Several maxima, including all cadmium maxima, are below the listed detection limits, so the low-level values are uncertain. These are grape distillates, a proxy for whiskey that does not measure it.