Quality and Safety Analysis for some Traditional Homemade Fruit Distillates from Transylvania (North West Romania)

Abstract

There were analyzed nine homemade samples of plum and apple distillates (brandies) originating from different areas of Romania- Transylvania (Maramureş, Cluj, Bistriţa-Năsăud counties). There were investigated some quality parameters (alcohol concentration, relative density, total dry extract, pH and total acidity) as well two safety markers (organo chlorinated pesticides and heavy metals - lead and copper). The methods used were routine determinations for quality analysis while, gas-chromatographic (GC-FID) quantitative evaluation of organo chlorinated pesticides and atomic absorption analysis for heavy metals. We found generally acceptable quality parameters, included in the standardized limits, while for safety, three samples were found to contain pesticides and two samples to contain higher concentrations of lead or copper. Further investigations will be focused more on safety parameters of a larger number of samples from Transylvania