Abstract
China's Four Famous Vinegars are recognized as industrial benchmarks and have been broadly studied. In contrast, the systematic quality characterization of Pingshan multistep fermented vinegar, a regional traditional Chinese vinegar, remains largely unexplored. We herein established a systematic comparative quality evaluation strategy by integrating high-performance liquid chromatography, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, in vitro antioxidant assays, and multivariate statistical analysis. The results demonstrated that Pingshan multistep fermented vinegar exhibits the highest total phenolic content, with chlorogenic acid and vanillic acid as the main differential phenolics among the nine targeted analytes, and showed comparable DPPH and ABTS radical scavenging activities to benchmark vinegars. Furfural was the top differentiating volatile with characteristic abundance in PMFV, and ethyl butyrate along with 18 other odor-active compounds (odor activity value >1) are the main contributors to its aroma profile. The coordinated composition of organic acids and free amino acids forms its relatively balanced taste-related chemical profile.