A practical method based on gas chromatography–mass spectrometry combined with chemometrics for the identification of Moutai liquor

Abstract The cases of fake Moutai-flavour liquor have occurred frequently, seriously disrupting market economic order, therefore it is of great significance to realise the Moutai-flavour liquor identification. Herein, an approach based on GC–MS technology coupled with chemometrics was established to achieve products identification and origins traceability. The normalised metabolite data were analysed by PCA, OPLS-DA and volcano plot to screen differential metabolites. The heatmap visualisation and boxplot were used to explore the correlation between chemical markers and liquor samples. PLS-DA model realised the accurate classification of Moutai-flavour liquor samples using the screened chemical markers. All Moutai-flavour liquor samples of the prediction set were accurately differentiated with 100% accuracy during the external verification. This study indicated that an approach based on GC–MS coupled with chemometrics has great potential for products identification and source tracing, thus providing technical support for combating crime of fake Moutai-flavour liquor.