Burgundy red wines: Representation of potential for aging

Abstract

This study was conducted to investigate wine professionals’ perception of aging potential of red wines. In the first experiment, 41 wine professionals assessed sixteen commercial Burgundy red wines via a binary categorization task, an aging potential rating task, and a hedonic rating task and an analytic sensory evaluation including an astringency and a bitterness rating task. The wines were also analyzed by High-Pressure Liquid Chromatography with a UV Detector (HPLC-UV) and their color was evaluated using Hue (H∗), Lightness (L∗) and Chroma (C∗) measurements. Results showed that the wines were split into two clusters on the basis of aging potential judgements indicating that the wine professionals had a collective representation of the characteristics of a wine with a potential for aging. Wines with a potential for aging were characterized by low L∗ and H∗ and high C∗ values, a high astringency and a higher concentration of anthocyanins and polyphenol. In a second experiment, 34 wine professionals performed three potential for aging binary sorting task based on (1) visual assessment only, (2) olfacto-gustatory assessment only and (3) overall assessment (visual plus in-mouth). Results showed that the sensory modalities tested were complementary and that visual or olfacto-gustatory assessments alone were not sufficient to explain overall judgments of aging potential.

Introduction

All wines do not have the same ability to age well throughout long cellaring. Some wines maintain their integrity or even improve with cellaring, whilst other wines are elaborated for consumption when they are young (e.g., Beaujolais nouveau). Thus, consumers should rely on professional experts’ advices to identify which wines can or should be consumed immediately and which wines can be kept. Professional experts base their judgments regarding potential for aging, the so-called “Vin de garde”, on tasting. However, there is no explicit rule to determine whether a wine has an aging potential or not. Thus, the questions are: What sensory criteria are used by professionals to identify wines with a potential for aging, and Is this judgment consensual among professionals in the field?

There is a lot of literature dealing with the evolution of physico-chemical characteristics of wines during aging, such as wine color (Monagas et al., 2006a, Monagas et al., 2007, Perez-Magarino and Gonzalez-San José, 2006), composition (phenolic compounds (Atanasova, Fulcrand, Cheynier, & Moutounet, 2002), pH, alcohol content) and the effect of wine-making methods (Girard, Yuksel, Cliff, Delaquis, & Reynolds, 2001), vintage and storage conditions (Garde-Cerdan & Ancin-Azpilicueta, 2006) on this evolution. Color seems to be a very important parameter in red wines as it enables tasters to anticipate the gustatory and/or olfactory properties based on their previous experience (Bell and Paton, 2000, Morrot et al., 2001). Thus, color can be helpful and may facilitate wine judgement, but it may also interfere in some occasions. For example, Maga (1974) showed that the color green was associated with a lower detection threshold of sweetness, because green is associated with an unripe fruit. Many authors showed that intensely colored solutions are perceived as having a more intense flavor than less intensely colored ones (Christensen, 1983, Johnson et al., 1982, Zellner and Kautz, 1990). Even wine experts are prone to such influences. For example, Pangborn, Berg, and Hansen (1963) reported that a white wine colored in pink to give it the appearance of a rosé was perceived as sweeter by wine professionals and Parr, White, and Heatherbell (2003) reported data where wine professionals rated Chardonnay wines colored with odorless anthocyanin more like red wine when the wine was judged in standard clear glasses than when judged in opaque glasses.

From a chemical point of view, the color of wine as well as its gustatory properties of astringency and bitterness originate from two groups of phenolic compounds, non-flavonoid and flavonoid compounds (Brossaud et al., 2001, Monagas et al., 2006b, Monagas et al., 2006a, Monagas et al., 2007, Montéleone et al., 2004, Peleg et al., 1999, Perez-Magarino and Gonzalez-San José, 2006, Vidal et al., 2003, Vidal et al., 2004). During wine aging these phenolic compounds undergo transformations, such as oxidation, condensation and polymerization (Atanasova et al., 2002, Monagas et al., 2006b) and the modification of these phenolic compounds would lead to a decrease in astringency (Mateus, Pinto, Ruao, & de Freitas, 2004) although the relationships between phenolic concentration and astrincency is not straightforward (Holt, Francis, Field, Herderich, & Iland, 2008). In the same way, Casamayor (2001) argued that the aromatic profile changes during aging and aged wines may develop first empyreumatic and then animal odors. These perceptual informations (color and olfact-gustatory properties) allow professionals to give an approximate age to wine. But how do they estimate its potential for further aging? As mentioned by Dubourdieu (2005), we know very little about the assessment of the aging potential of a wine. To bring some insights into this issue, we worked with Burgundy experts (wine professionals) and Burgundy wines. In a first experiment, we checked the consensus among wine professionals when assessing potential for aging of 16 wines. The basic physico-chemical data on these wines have also been provided to give some indications as the underlying sources of the judgments. In the second experiment, we evaluated the impact of evaluation modalities (visual only, olfacto-gustatory only, and overall) on judgments of potential for aging, employing the same wines as in experiment 1.