Although producers are not required

Although producers are not required to mention the seasoning in their brandies, they recently do it in the aim of differentiating their products and gaining recognition from consumers. Many new brands have been released with success and therefore imitations can raise up. Hence, authentication methods that could assure the mentioned characteristics of any brandy have to be developed. These methods should provide reliable information in the shortest time with the lowest costs. Methods based on spectrophotometry of brandy samples such as colour analysis or Folin-Ciocalteu Index, which have demonstrated to be related to both ageing time and sherry kind in the case of wines, have a quick response and a low performance cost (Schwarz, Rodríguez, Guillén, & Barroso, 2012). But in the case of brandies spectrophotometric methods are not reliable: brandy producers are used to standardising the colour of their spirits by adding caramel (Bronze, Boas, & Belchior, 1997; Cruz, Canas, & Belchior, 2013; European Union (EC), 2008), whatever their ageing time or seasoning are, so the colour analysis is unable to discriminate brandies with these parameters. This custom also increases the content of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural which is a compound affected by the Folin reagent, so the Folin-Ciocalteu Index