Abstract:To explore the flavor perception characteristics of three typical Chinese Baijiu aroma types and establish a scientific multimodal flavor quality evaluation method, two representative products each of sauce-aroma, strong-aroma, and light-aroma Baijiu were selected as research objects. Check-all-that-apply (CATA) and quantitative descriptive analysis (QDA) were used for sensory evaluation, and the electronic tongue was used for intelligent taste detection. Physical and chemical indicators including viscosity, contact angle, volatile total acids, and volatile total esters were determined to compare the sensory and physicochemical differences among Baijiu of different aroma types. The results showed that significant differences (P<0.05) were observed in the ten key sensory attributes among the three aroma types of Baijiu. Specifically, sauce-aroma Baijiu exhibited prominent long aftertaste and rich mouthfeel, strong-aroma Baijiu featured soft, mellow, clean and harmonious taste, light-aroma Baijiu was characterized by the mellow and clean taste. Physicochemical results revealed a hierarchical difference in viscosity among different aroma types, with sauce-aroma Baijiu possessing the highest viscosity and light-aroma Baijiu showing the lowest overall viscosity. The strong-aroma Baijiu had significantly higher contents of volatile total acids and total esters, and the difference in contact angle was directly correlated with the oral spreadability and clean taste of Baijiu. The electronic tongue data combined with multivariate statistical analysis demonstrated that the cumulative variance contribution rate of the first three principal components reached 99.79%, indicating that the electronic tongue data could effectively characterize the taste profiles of Baijiu samples. Meanwhile, linear discriminant analysis (LDA) achieved a 100% accurate classification for all Baijiu samples. This study established a multimodal evaluation method for Baijiu flavor based on sensory evaluation, physicochemical detection, and intelligent sensory evaluation, which could provide technical support for the objective evaluation of flavor quality and process optimization of Chinese Baijiu with different aroma types.