Assessment of sensory and physical-chemical quality, and potential for certification of cachaças from the state of Paraíba, Brazil

Abstract The State of Paraíba is an important producer of artisanal cachaça that has outstanding quality in national tasting panels and for this reason this research studied organizational aspects for certification and compliance with Good Manufacturing Practices - GMP - of 53% of formal producers. Samples of cachaças from these producers were evaluated for physical-chemical and sensory quality by experienced tasters. Sixty-five percent of the cachaças evaluated met the legally determined physical-chemical quality parameters, but only 35% met the certification parameters. Evaluated the cachaça factories, on average, 85% of the GMP criteria were met. While, meeting the organizational criteria established for certification ranged from 48.1 to 82.4%. The sensory evaluation of the cachaça samples indicated that the distillates from Paraíba should be subjected to longer storage times in wooden barrels, as they had a high alcoholic olfactory character, aroma related to solvent, burning and pungency and did not present intense oiliness, vanilla flavor and caramel. The results indicated that cachaça producers in Paraíba will have difficulties in obtaining the certification seal, since they only respected 66.4% of the organizational aspects of registration and mandatory control.