Published on August 13, 2026
Charl Folscher/Unsplash
Have you ever sipped a fine single malt scotch and thought to yourself, “Hmm, this kind of tastes like tropical fruit—specifically mango?” If you have detected tropical fruit notes in your whisky before, particularly in single malt scotch and Irish whiskey, you’re not crazy—a new study has come out that reveals exactly where those tasting notes come from.
The study was conducted by Heriot Watt, a university located in Edinburgh, Scotland. According to a press release issued earlier this week, university researchers working with the Japanese drinks company Kirin (which used to own Four Roses before selling it to E & J Gallo) have come across the exact compounds that give whisky a mango-like flavor. Tropical fruit notes are nothing new to seasoned whisky drinkers, the result of the yeast strain that is used for the fermentation process that often become much more noticeable after a whisky has aged for several decades. “Fruity notes like banana, apple, and pear have long been linked to esters, which are produced during fermentation,” said Annie Hill, a professor at Heriot-Watt’s International Center for Brewing and Distilling, in a statement. “But we didn’t know where the mango flavor was coming from—and now we do.”
