For distillers, flavor has always been king. A spirit that tastes bad will never be as successful as one that tastes good, regardless of how much marketing or cool packaging surrounds it.
However, creating spirits that taste good—and changing them to make them taste better—is no easy feat. And it often requires an understanding that spirit’s unique flavor matrix.
Enter: The Matrix
Before you can effectively create and change flavor in your products, you should first understand the concept of a flavor matrix and how it relates to spirits.
A flavor matrix is the mixture of complex relationships among the various properties and components of a substance that come together to produce its overall flavor. Notably, factors that affect flavor matrices aren’t limited to volatile flavor-active compounds; nonflavor compounds and even the spirit’s unique physical properties can also be factors.
For example, let’s consider two whiskeys that have identical alcohol contents and age statements. If one has an increased concentration of dissolved-wood components—not flavor-active—consumers could still perceive it as being slightly denser, and thus they might describe it as sweeter than the other whiskey.
Conversely, for spirits that contain sugar, let’s say one spirit contains a higher proportion of highly volatile compounds. Consumers might perceive it as lighter and therefore less sugary than a similarly sweetened spirit.
A wide range of different factors affects spirit-flavor matrices, including temperature and even time. Because of that inherent complexity, it’s often difficult to make broad generalizations about flavor matrices, and they tend to be unique to each product.
Luckily, there are resources that can help. For many established types of spirit, such as whiskey and rum, there are recognized flavor wheels and guides that we can consult to help us understand the relationships among different components and their importance. For lesser-known spirits, there are numerous studies and peer-reviewed papers on the different flavor characteristics of almost every compound found in spirits. There are also several books—published by both the culinary and perfume industries—about creating and understanding flavor/aroma matrices, and these books can be of great help to novice distillers.
Unfortunately, these resources are only guides, and it’s still useful to learn to create your own flavor matrices for each of your products through experience and experimentation. Once you have, you can then begin to manipulate your spirit’s flavor matrix to unlock its full potential.
Manipulating the Matrix
There are several different ways you can affect the flavor matrix of a spirit. Perhaps the most straightforward one is addition.
Addition is simply the practice of adding a new ingredient or flavor to a spirit to give it a new taste. For example, adding grapefruit peel to a vodka will give it a distinct grapefruit note that wouldn’t have been present otherwise. Simple additions can be very straightforward, and they can have tremendously beneficial effects on the overall flavor of a product. However, there are pitfalls.
The first is that not all additions are good ideas. For example, adding a fish note from raw squid to a whiskey may sound interesting in theory, but in reality, most distillers would be hard-pressed to find a consumer willing to purchase such a product.
A second pitfall relates to complex spirits such as brandy: Even very simple flavor additions can cause unexpected flavor synergies that may not be to your liking. That’s why it’s always important to perform extensive benchtop testing before simply adding a flavor or ingredient to a spirit.
The second way of affecting a spirit’s flavor matrix—and possibly the most common—is subtraction. As the name implies, subtraction is any action to remove a component or components of a spirit that affect the spirit’s flavor matrix. The classic example of a subtraction from a spirit’s flavor matrix would be filtering—particularly carbon filtering—though there are many other ways you can subtract elements of the flavor matrix.
Subtraction can be attractive, especially when you’re dealing with a product that has an obvious defect. However, again, there are caveats. The first is that because of the limitation of most subtractive processes, it’s almost impossible to remove only one element of a spirit’s flavor matrix. When subtracting, even if you’re targeting undesirable compounds, it’s common to also remove some desirable ones.
The second caveat to subtraction is that—with the exception of some actively toxic chemicals, such as acetone—there is almost no compound or element in a spirit that is entirely undesirable. That’s because many compounds we’d describe as defects in large concentrations also have desirable characteristics at low concentrations. Simply removing a compound or aspect from a spirit completely can be detrimental to its overall character. That’s why many distillers try to avoid subtracting elements from a spirit’s flavor matrix whenever possible.
Finally, the last method available to affect a spirit’s flavor matrix is known as enhancement. Enhancement, sometimes also known as synergizing or layering, is somewhat difficult to define, but we might describe it as any action to change the perception of existing flavors in a spirit. Sometimes, this enhancement leads to the perception of new flavors.
We can also break down enhancement into two different subcategories: additive enhancement and transformative enhancement.
Additive enhancement is the addition of a component or compounds to enhance the existing elements of a spirit’s flavor matrix. For example, adding lemon aroma to an already citrus-forward gin or adding a chemical flavor enhancer to an RTD—those could both be described as additive enhancement.
Transformative enhancement, on the other hand, isn’t as easily defined. We could describe it as the production processes and decisions that highlight certain elements of the spirit’s flavor matrix. This might include decisions about mash regimens, distillation cut points, maturation, or any other process decision that affects the final flavor matrix in a spirit.
Both additive and transformative enhancement are important levers you can use to influence the overall final flavor of your spirits. By increasing the perception or presence of one or more compounds, it’s possible to create entirely new flavors that wouldn’t have been found previously.
Despite the name, enhancing doesn’t always mean increasing. For example, the enhancement of additional sugar to a liqueur to mask its alcohol bite might lower a flavor by enhancing the sweetness.
The only way to learn exactly how various forms of enhancement will affect the flavor matrix is through experimentation. That’s why it’s always important to take the time to fully understand all aspects of your flavor matrix before making any changes.
Conceptualize the Complexity
Understanding and controlling flavor matrices is an important skill for any distiller to unlock.
Many factors make up a flavor matrix, and there are many ways to manipulate aspects of that matrix. Sometimes, it might seem impossible to fully account for all the variables that go into a flavor matrix.
However, by using available resources and through experimentation, you can learn to fully unlock the flavor potential of your spirits.