The U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) is responsible for determining proper tax classification of tobacco products. Tobacco products in the U.S. may fall into several taxable categories including cigars, cigarettes, snuff, chewing tobacco, pipe tobacco and roll-your-own. As significant components of tobacco, polyphenols are valuable for product characterization and differentiation.

The chemical changes that occur in tobacco leaves during curing have been studied extensively over the years and are well documented in the literature. The method of curing has a strong impact on the chemical profile of the processed tobacco. Chemical changes leading to color differences between flue-cured and air-cured tobaccos result from chlorophyll decomposition, which contributes to yellowing in flue-cured tobaccos, and phenolic oxidation, which leads to browning in air-cured tobaccos. Typical phenolic content for flue-cured tobacco is 7.0% or more, while air-cured and fire-cured tobaccos generally contain less than 0.5%. In the work described in this presentation, pressurized liquid extraction (PLE) and UPLC ESI-MS/MS were used to prepare and analyze air-cured, flue-cured, and oriental tobaccos supplied to the TTB laboratory. The combination of PLE and UPLC ESI-MS/MS provided levels of extraction efficiency and sensitivity that permitted our laboratory to study even minor polyphenolic components in samples where the total phenolic content was very low. The results from PLE extractions will be compared to results from samples prepared using ultrasonication, an established approach to polyphenol extraction from tobacco matrices.