The contents of Ca, Cu, K, Mg, Na, P and S were simultaneously determined in grape juices and soft drinks using ICP-OES. The experimental results were analyzed by methods of exploratory analysis: principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA). The results showed that Na was the principal element for discrimination among samples. Preservatives addition and mineral salts contents also were important to discriminate the clusters. Exploratory analysis was of great help in the data treatment giving information that would be too difficult to extract from the original data matrix.
Grape juices; grape soft drinks; ICP-OES; chemometry; PCA; HCA
