Non experts’ understanding of terms frequently used by experts to describe the sensory properties of wine: An investigation based on opposites

The sensorial experience of wine for nonexperts: How the terms frequently used in Italian guidebooks are understood by standard consumers in Vietnam

“…Taken as a whole, the results of the study presented in this article already offer some hints in terms of basic research questions concerning both the importance of opposites in shaping the cognitive experience of specific domains (the domain of wine in this case) and in relation to the theme of antonym canonicity, that is, relating to the fact that opposites range from pairs with very good matches to pairs with no clearly preferred partners, depending on the experiential context which is mentally activated (see Paradis et al, 2009). In this final section, we will also discuss the results in relation to the findings which emerged from the twin study carried out previously with Italian participants (Bianchi et al, 2021) as described in the introduction to this article. The difference between the two populations in terms of wine traditions and their familiarity with drinking grape wines as well as the language used to describe them make a cross-cultural comparison between them particularly interesting.…”

“…Our study addressed a series of questions, inspired by the abovementioned Italian study (Bianchi et al, 2021). The first question concerned how many of the 64 sensory descriptors presented as stimuli were in effect understood by the participants as constituting a dimension, that is, they could be conceived of in relation to an opposite property.…”

“…A comparison between most frequent opposites chosen by the Vietnamese participants in relation to the 64 target properties, for white and red wine (see the study presented in this article) and the most frequent opposite chosen by the Italian participants in a twin study (Bianchi et al, 2021). The relationship between the properties chosen by the two samples of participants is described in column R (I = Identical property; S = Similar property; D = Different property).…”

“…Evidence of the capacity of standard consumers (i.e., people who have neither followed a course on wine or are wine professionals) to think of the sensory properties of wine in terms of opposites emerged in a previous study carried out in Italy (Bianchi et al, 2021). This study involved 64 frequently used descriptors of wine which had been selected during research on a corpus of terms which can be found in popular Italian wine guidebooks, in the Product Specifications of a number of well-known red and white wines, and in the lexicon used by the Italian Sommelier association to rate wines.…”

“…Therefore, Italy and Vietnam differ greatly both in terms of the traditions surrounding wine and the language used to describe it (Le, 2005;Nguyen & Nguyen, 2015;To, 2010). The 64 terms that were used with the Italian participants in the abovementioned study by Bianchi et al (2021) were also used in the present study with Vietnamese participants. The aim was to investigate how a group of nonexperts understood the terms by means of the same methodology based on opposites.…”