## 1 Introduction  
Mexico is a world-recognized country for the variety of its ancestral distilled beverages obtained from the fermentation of plants that belong to the family _Agavaceae_, such as _A. tequilina webber_ for tequila, _A. angustifolia_ and _A. potattorum_ for mezcal, and _Dasylirion_ species of the _Nolinacea_ family for sotol. Dasylirion species are indigenous to the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, where they grow in its canyons and desert. _Dasylirion_ species commonly known as sotol or sereque were initially used by the native tribes of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico as food, for medical purposes, and in religious ceremonies. During the Spanish conquest with the introduction of the still, the distillation of fermented sold must was implemented, improving the production of the distilled spirit stool [1,2]. Sotol production methods have experienced slight modifications over the past two centuries. Initially, the plant is harvested when it reaches around six years of age after growing in adverse climate conditions, promoting the concentration of sugars in the heart of the plant. The \"jimador\" is the person in charge of cutting the plant, who, provided with an axe, removes the leaves of the pineapple, leaving intact the root of the plant so a new heart can grow in a couple of months. The pineapples are transported to the sotol production site, where they are cooked in an underground stone oven for around 12 h. Afterwards, the pineapples are ground in a mill, and the sotol must is let stand for a couple of days in open vessels or fermentation tanks. Then, water is added, and the sugars of the sotol must are biosynthetically converted to ethanol during a spontaneous fermentation process of around five to seven days. The fermented sotol must is then double distilled, and, finally, the alcohol concentration is adjusted from 35-55% before being bottled [1,3]. In 2002, the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI) declared that sotol had an appellation of origin to the geographical region located in the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Durango. In August of 2004, the secretary of the economy released the Mexican Official Norm NOM-159-SCFI-2004 \"Alcoholic beverages-Sotol-Specifications and test methods\" [4]. These regulations have prompted sotol in national and international markets. Although sotol has an international presence, there is limited information regarding the transformation process of sotol must during fermentation, the microorganisms involved, and the profiles of the volatile metabolites that give origin to the unique flavor of sotol. It has been reported that sotol (_Dasylirion_ sp.) is composed of complex sugars such as fructooligosaccharides, fructosyl polymers, and smaller molecules such as glucose and fructose. The concentration of reducing sugars in the extracts of cooked sotol pineapples can be around 31.9%, depending on the relation of water to mass weight of pineaaple used. During fermentation, reducing sugars are adjusted to around 10.5%, giving a concentration of soluble sugars of 10 \"Brix, decreasing to 5 \"Brix at the end of the fermentation. It has been described that, during the study of microorganisms present in sotol plant tissue and samples during the start and the end of sotol must fermentation, throughout morphological and biochemical tests, species of filamentous fungi, bacteria, and yeasts were identified [3]. Additionally, during the analysis of six commercial brands of the distillate sotol spirit, where the volatile compounds were assed, 25 chemical compounds were detected belonging to the chemical family of alcohols, volatile acids, aldehydes, esters, and polyphenols [5]. Previous investigations have presented an initial characterization of the alcoholic drink sotol, and a higher number of studies exist for other Mexican distilled spirits such as tequila and mezcal.