Enabling Distillers To Make Smoother Spirits

“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’. No tool, equipment or process that distillers use today can fully eliminate harshness, they can only reduce it. High-proof distilling, high-tech filtering, aging decades in barrels — none fully erradicate the harshness.

Viriato enables distillers of spirits to fully remove the harshness to achieve their highest possible smoothness — COMPLETELY smooth, with no harsh bite and burn! Viriato is designed to work with all manufacturing equipment and processes, and all types of distilled alcoholic beverages regardless of the mash (e.g. whiskies, vodkas, tequilas, rums, gins, brandies, baijius, sojus, etc.). Viriato is scientifically designed to only target the offending compounds, thus uncovering the unique flavors of the spirit that were obscured and hidden by the harsh sensation.

• Increase Profits from Higher Sales  Volume, Margin and Market Share. Consumers prefer smoother spirits, and those command higher-premium prices, by double or much more. Viriato makes products smoother, either enhancing  ultra-premium products  to  increase  sales, or elevating the tier of a product  to  increase the price and margin. Market share can also be greatly improved when one’s product is objectively smoother than competitors’. Brand image is also enhanced when the products are more approachable and enjoyable. Viriato presents an exceptional opportunity for distillers to make both a meaningful improvement to their products, and also increase their sales and profitability.

• New Product Innovation. Without the overwhelming sensation of harshness, spirits products are more approachable to more people, and a more enjoyable experience for everyone. Without the sensory distraction of harshness, the more subtle attributes that distillers artistically create in their spirits can be better perceived and enjoyed. New flavor profiles are also now also possible; imagine even more subtle gins or complex flavored vodkas. And aged spirits that achieve both ultra-smooth with the brighter flavors of youth, and when aging spirits becomes simply about flavor development without the need to ‘mellow’. Viriato can also have positive effects on many Ready-to-Drink products, even low-alc and no-alc. 

• Potential Manufacturing Efficiencies.  Using Viriato does not require any changes to distillers’ equipment or processes. However, since some of distillers’ processes have an objective of reducing harshness, with the harsh compounds already eliminated via Viriato, distillers may be wish to explore gaining efficiencies: capture more ethanol by cutting wider, use less energy by distilling to lower proofs,  increase throughput by requiring less filtration or using fewer additives. Expensive barrel aging might be shorter if it is only used to impart flavors and not also having to mellow harshness, which would save aging expenses and the costly losses to angels’ share, while enabling those barreled products to get to market faster.   

For centuries, even until today, the true cause of the harshness in spirits has remained a mystery. Voodoo Scientific made the scientific discovery of what precisely causes the pain sensation in the mouth and throat when drinking spirits! 

We started with understanding the physiology of the pain sensation meeting with the Nobel Prize -winning expert in the specific nerve receptor in the oral cavity that creates this pain response. Then understanding the attributes of compounds that would trigger the receptor, from there we performed scientific analysis of various spirits to identify the precise compounds they had in common that could trigger the pain receptor. This was the new discovery — the pain response of the nerve, and its receptors triggered by specific compounds in any beverage alcohol.
We then studied the manufacturing processes of beverage alcohol to know where and how the compounds are formed. 

With these scientific and operational insights, we formulated our product Viriato to eliminate only the unwanted compounds that trigger the pain response, while also not affecting the compounds that create the spirit’s unique flavors — only the harsh bite is eliminated. Without the harshness overwhelming the experience, the other flavors are uncovered and now noticeable in a more enjoyable experience. 

Viriato is our unique precision enzyme system which has been scientifically developed to target only the specific offending compoundstthat cause harshness while leaving all other compounds unaffected. The unique character of distillers’ products are now uncovered to be more enjoyably experienced without the distracting and painful bite and burn.  

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 the fermentation stage as a processing aid since, simply put, it does not persist past distillation into the final product in the bottle. Alternatively, Viriato can be added during the polishing stage to smoothen products that were previously distilled, such as smoothing neutral grain spirits (aka NGS or GNS). 

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 and/or duration of Viriato used, distillers can select the level of residual harshness in their spirit— including full elimination!

Independently Confirmed Effectiveness:

Lab Confirmation:  In rigorous independent lab-based tests under various conditions, Viriato has been proven effective on the target substrates while leaving other substrates unaffected.  

Distillery Confirmation:  Viriato has been proven effective in real-world trials at distillers with different types of spirits, and in differing manufacturing equipment and conditions. 

Expert Sensory Confirmation:  The experts at America’s longest-running international alcohol beverage evaluation firm, Beverage Testing Institute, performed a double-blind taste comparison of a spirit treated with Viriato vs. untreated, which confirmed the improvement as “drastically different.”

Distillers’ Sensory Confirmation: Our favorite evidence is that distillers are universally impressed with the sensory difference, and are becoming our customers.

Patents:  We have our foundational patent approved in the US, which protects the method of using enzymes to catalyze the specific offending compounds that create the harshness in alcohol. This patent has also been filed in 20+ countries worldwide. Additional patents are also in development.

Product  Availability:  Scale-up of manufacturing is underway, with initial availability of Viriato expected in early 2026. 

Manufacturer Partner:  We will soon announce our world-class manufacturing partner.

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 a top international analytical lab and 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, science-backed 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.