Tequila isn’t exactly health food, but those who want to waste away a day or two in Margaritaville might be relieved to know that Mexican and German chemists have devised a way to make sure you are drinking the real thing.
Tequila comes from the blue agave plant, which limits production of the drink to certain geographical areas, primarily west and central Mexico, and the government there has strict quality standards as well as labeling regulations. But as with everything, there are attempts at fraud. Chiefly this is done by mixing pure agave liquid with as much as 49 percent sugar, then exporting the quantities in bulk, where they may be bottled and labeled as “100 percent agave” when they are anything but.
Chemists now have found a way to test these labeling claims using high tech methods – ion and gas chromatography and a screening test called Fournier Transform Infrared Spectrometry, a way of taking a “molecular fingerprint” of a substance. The scientists report they were successful at spotting tequila imposters, since pure agave has significantly higher concentrations of certain chemicals.
If you want to read the study, it will be in the June issue of the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.