“Smooth” is the word most used when describing the best spirits. Yet all spirits, even the most expensive and longest aged, have some harshness. Until now there has not been a means to completely eliminate that harsh sensation, typically described as a painful ’bite’ or ‘burn’. Viriato enables distilled spirits to fully eradicate this harshness to achieve their highest possible smoothness — COMPLETELY smooth, with no harsh bite and burn!
For centuries, and until today, the true cause of the harshness in spirits has remained a mystery. No tool, equipment or process that distillers use today can fully eradicate harshness, only reduce it. Our scientists made the discovery of what causes the pain sensation in the mouth and throat when drinking spirits. With this scientific insight, we developed our product Viriato to eliminate only the compounds that trigger the pain response while leaving the spirit’s flavors unaffected — only the harsh bite is eliminated. Viriato is formulated to work with all types of distilled alcoholic beverages, regardless of the mash used (e.g. whiskies, vodkas, tequilas, rums, gins, brandies, baijius, sojus, etc.).
Viriato is our unique precision enzyme system, which has been scientifically developed to target only the specific offending compounds without affecting the flavors of the product. Distillers keep their spirit’s same unique character, now smoother.
Viriato is food-grade safe, and specifically designed to work on every type of spirit and work with whatever equipment is used by the distillery, making it seamless to adopt by anyone making anything spirits.
Distillers simply add Viriato during fermentation as a processing aid since, simply put, it does not persist past distillation into the final product in the bottle. No new equipment or process changes are required. There are no negative effects on manufacturing throughput or ethanol production, in fact, possibly some advantages. By adjusting the amount used, distillers can select the level of residual harshness in their spirit— including fully eliminating!
Viriato has been proven effective in both rigorous lab-based tests and real-life trials at distillers with different types of spirits.
Patents are filed in the US, and in the process of being obtained internationally.
Scale-up for manufacturing is underway, with initial availability expected in 2025.
Industry Recognition!
Honored by the spirits industry’s leading association, DISCUS, receiving an award as a
Top Innovation in the Spirits Industry!
Voodoo Scientific is collaborating with the spirits industry’s leading sensory science firm to develop a Harshness Scale that would provide an objective numerical rating of spirits products‘ level of harshness. Inspired by the Scoville Scale that rates the spiciness of peppers, this will provide consumers with a trusted, independent means to objectively compare the harshness of spirits products. This independent numeric rating, for example where one product may be rated a 78 and another 88, consumers will be able to confidently know which products are genuinely the smoothest.
Artisan Spirit Magazine
https://www.artisanspiritmag.com/spirit-mag-issues/fall-2023
(page 113: Innovating with Enzymes)
AgFunder News
(Photo: Voodoo's CEO & CSO)
DISCUS' Conference 2023
Voodoo Scientific has been honored with an award by the spirits industry’s premier association, DISCUS, for being a
Top Spirits Industry Innovation!
(Photo: Chris Swonger, DISCUS' CEO, with Voodoo's Martin & Joana)
Martin is an accomplished global executive and innovator in multiple industries. Successful with global leaders such as Visa and Vodafone, as well as growing start-ups as CEO/CXO, from high-tech to bio-tech. Martin's responsibilities have exceeded $2 billion in revenue and 1000s of people, generating over $5 billion in new company valu
Martin is an accomplished global executive and innovator in multiple industries. Successful with global leaders such as Visa and Vodafone, as well as growing start-ups as CEO/CXO, from high-tech to bio-tech. Martin's responsibilities have exceeded $2 billion in revenue and 1000s of people, generating over $5 billion in new company value. For example, building Vodafone's most successful company in both profitability and growth. His international acumen comes from hands-on work in over 20 countries, including West & East Europe, Asia, Middle East, Africa, and the Americas.
Martin has M.B.A. & M.Ed. degrees from Stanford University.
Joana is a respected food & beverage industry executive and innovator whose inventions and trade secrets include over $5B in new revenue, and over $100 million in cost savings. Her innovation skill set spans ‘blue sky’ disruption to innovative food processing techniques. She has a rare breadth of business acumen experienced in R&D, s
Joana is a respected food & beverage industry executive and innovator whose inventions and trade secrets include over $5B in new revenue, and over $100 million in cost savings. Her innovation skill set spans ‘blue sky’ disruption to innovative food processing techniques. She has a rare breadth of business acumen experienced in R&D, sales, manufacturing and product development. Recently as CSO with Califia Farms, previously leading R&D organizations at Land O'Lakes and General Mills’ Pillsbury and Yoplait. Joana has a B.S. in Food Engineering from the Universidade Católica in Portugal, and a Ph.D. in Food Engineering from the University of Minnesota.