Representational and sensory cues as drivers of individual differences in expert quality assessment of red wines

Demystifying wine expertise through the lens of imagination: Descriptions and imagery vividness across sensory modalities

For most untrained novices, talking about wine or imagining the smells and flavours of wine is difficult. Wine experts, on the other hand, have been found to have better imagery for wine, and are also more proficient in describing wine. Some scholars have suggested that imagery and language are based on similar underlying processes, but no conclusive evidence has been found regarding mental imagery and language production. In this study, we examined the relationship between imagery and language use in both novices and experts. In an online experiment, wine experts and novices were asked to imagine the colour, smell, taste and mouthfeel of wines in different situations, and were asked to rate the vividness of the imagined experience as well as describe it with words. The results show that experts differ from novices on a number of linguistic measures when describing wine, including the number of words used, the type of words used, the concreteness of those words, and the adjective to noun ratio. Similarly, imagery for wine was more vivid in wine experts compared to novices in the modalities of smell, taste, and mouthfeel, in alignment with previous work. Surprisingly, we found that no single linguistic variable significantly predicted the reported vividness of wine imagery, neither in experts nor in novices. However, the linguistic model predicted imagery vividness better using data from experts compared to novices. Taken together, these findings underscore that imagery and language are different facets of wine cognition.

The Sensory Space of Wines: From Concept to Evaluation and Description. A Review

The concept of sensory space was first formulated over 25 years ago and has been widely adopted in oenology for around the last 15 years. It is based on both the common organoleptic characteristics of products and the mental representations built by specific groups of people. Exploring this concept involves first assessing whether it already exists for tasters, and, when this is the case, conducting perceptual evaluations to verify its effectiveness before potentially highlighting the associated sensory properties. The goal of this review, which focuses on applications linked to the field of oenology, is to study how these three steps are carried out, how the corresponding tasks and tests are performed and managed, and the type of results that can be obtained.

Rose Wine Market: Anything but Colour?

In many countries, the consumption of still wine is in strong decline. The market for rose wine, however, stands in stark contrast to this trend, seeing worldwide growth of almost 30% over the last 15 years. For most observers/experts, product colour plays an important role in this paradigm shift. For this reason, companies’ marketing efforts often focus on this purely visual characteristic. There is, however, no certainty that other emerging consumer demands, related to environmental concerns or how “natural” a wine is (organic wines, natural wines, etc.), do not also play a role in the enthusiasm seen in new wine consumers. This article proposes an assessment of expectations related to colour and the decisions made by rose wine consumers, using two complementary experiments carried out in France. The first experiment is based on an online survey studying only consumers’ colour preferences. We will show that, contrary to popular belief, there is no consensus on this criterion, although regional trends can be identified. Typically, the “salmon” shade, which is generally the leader on the global market—and characteristic of Provence wines—does not win unanimous support across all regions. In contrast, an “apricot” shade seems to be preferred by consumers in the Bordeaux region. The second experiment confirms this result within the framework of an experimental market revealing consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP). This market also offers consumers the opportunity to taste wines and provides information on organic certification and “naturalness” (symbolised by the absence of added sulphites). We will then demonstrate how the latter criteria, although often popular, play only a small role—compared with colour—in consumer decisions. We will conclude this article with observations on the atypical nature of the rose wine market and on possible avenues for further research related to the emotional role colour plays in wine tasting and its possible specificity in the world of food and drink products.

New grape varieties for production of high-quality wines, and assessment methodology for varietal characteristics of the product

In recent years, Russian and international breeders have produced a great many of new varieties of Vitis vinifera grapes as well as interspecies hybrids, distinguished by a high quality of fruit and other useful economic and biological features. Having a big reserve of technologically important substances and hygienic factors of grapevine, the resistant varieties may prove especially efficient for the production of premium-class wines. The appearance of high-end Russian wines with protected geographical indication (PGI) and protected appellation of origin (PAO), first of all, fits in with the requirements of international markets. It is a necessary criterion for product quality and safety assurance at the highly competitive global market, and development of universally recognized brands. It also helps resolve a number of socio-economic issues, such as formation of winemaking culture, and production of wines of guaranteed quality from own grapes. This study is devoted to substantiating the necessity for development of methods of formation of single information databases on characteristic features of PGI and PAO wines, including their distinctive organoleptic, physical and chemical properties (extract components – the cation-anion composition, organic acids, total phenolic and anthocyanin content; unique colour characteristics), as well as the application of the system of organoleptic assessment of wines with the use of descriptive analysis of wine colour, flavour and taste. It is well-timed and relevant to determine the regularities of realization of the varietal potential of a grapevine plant in terms of climatic conditions of growing and geographical origin based on the study of the endogenous and exogenous components of wines with the use of the methods of high-performance capillary electrophoresis, spectral photometry, organoleptic analysis, and statistical techniques. This research generalizes and puts forth a contemporary view of varietal and geographical identification of wines. It is shown that the proposed research guideline is highly sought-after, and it is of fundamental and practical importance for the development of regional and national selection, genetic, viticultural and winemaking industries.