Exposure to Aroma Reference Standards Alters Participants’ Descriptions of Commercial Red and White Wines

Goals: This study examines how exposure to aromatic reference standards affects the way people describe wines. We compared three groups of participants with varying prior exposure to wine: experienced wine tasters, wine consumers, and sensory descriptive analysis panelists. Additionally, we assessed whether different participant groups preferred specific terms (i.e., “rose”) or more general categories (i.e., “floral”) to describe wines. Finally, we sought to validate that a list of recipes established by a previous panel accurately represented the terms for which they were developed.

Key Findings:

• Participants with the most experience with the reference standards performed best on a blind identification of reference standards.

• The total number of terms used to describe wines significantly increased after exposure to reference standards for all participants, indicating that these standards affect participants’ sensory descriptions of wines.

• Use of terms from the list of reference standards significantly increased after exposure for all participants.

• Based on perception maps, experienced wine tasters tended to agree on wine descriptions and could better differentiate between specific wines than wine consumers.

Impact and Significance: The ability to identify specific aromas in wines is essential to the careers of sommeliers, winemakers, wine journalists, and wine salesforce to ensure that consumers receive an accurate description of their wines either verbally or as written on the label. While consumers expect that such descriptions accurately represent the wine, this language is not standardized, so the same term may be used for different aromatic characteristics in different wines. Our study shows that mere exposure to reference standards, without training, still helps people describe their perceptions. Moreover, training improved people’s ability to name olfactory standards. Prolonged training using reference standards may enable wine industry professionals to improve accuracy and develop a common vocabulary to use when communicating about wines.