Modern sensory methods of evaluating wine

Abstract

WITH THE GROWING CONSUMPTION of wine in this country and the rapidly developing interest of the general public in wine appreciation, maintenance of uniform quality and improvement in quality have become matters of increasing importance to California wine makers. At present our only method of distinguishing quality is by sensory examination-visual observation, smelling, and tasting-and this is the province of professionals, calling for skill, training, and experience. To some extent objective tests can be applied to supplement and support sensory judgments, but quality ratings still rest largely on the estimates of expert tasters. While much has been written about the various aspects of wine judging, the information is scattered and not always easily available. Furthermore, because of their subjective nature, standards tend to vary, and a major problem of wine tasting has been to achieve, by various types of testing, uniform and reliable judgments. The purpose of this publication is to provide a complete guide to the sensory examination of all kinds of wines. The standards proposed herein are generally accepted measures of quality, and an attempt has been made, insofar as possible, to provide objective criteria that will be useful both to amateur and experienced tasters. The first section is devoted to a discussion of the senses and the way they function, since this is considered fundamental to their intelligent utilization. The chemical characteristics of wines are discussed under color, smell, and taste, and the available data on their detection or differentiation are summarized. A list of words for purely descriptive work is given in connection with each of these. A brief description of the main types of wine produced in California then follows. Various types of tasting for different purposes are suggested. Difference testing is discussed, and the statistical procedures for determining significance are outlined. Finally, scoring and ranking pro-1

Taste Interrelationships. VI. Sucrose, Sodium Chloride, and Citric Acid in Canned Tomato Juice

“…A method of sequential analysis described by Amerine et al (1959) was used to select 13 judges from' 21 people tested. On each of 18 days of testing, each judge received 6 randomly presented triangle tests of commercially canned tomato juice, two varying in amount of added sucrose, two in amount of added sodium chloride, and two in amount of added citric acid.…”

Methyl Anthranilate as an Aroma Constituent of American Wine

“…It has since been implicated as a major contributor to "foxiness" in American wines (Sale and Wilson, 1926;Winkler, 1972). Amerine et al (1959), using Catawba as an example, suggested that "foxy" varieties need not contain methyl anthranilate.…”

Data Analysis of Sensory Scores, Evaluations of Panelists and Wine Score Cards

“…A comparison of these weights is shown in Table 5. It was evident that different groups of judges placed different emphasis on the individual properties of wine evaluated and this led to the major discrepancy of the Davis score card pointed out by Amerine and Roessler (1976).…”

“…Methods of optimizing the use of panels for wine quality evaluations have been investigated over a period of years. Amerine et al (1959) gave a clear description of the methods used, and also methods for panel selection. Considerable efforts have also been expended to articulate and to evaluate a list of wine descriptors (Lehrer, 1975;Wu et al, 1977).…”