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Wine Sensory and Quality Control

The quality of wine is primarily measure by sensory enjoyment of its consumers who savour wine in a conscious manner. The anticipated fulfilment caused by full retronasal olfaction occurs during consumption of any wine, this is a major buying motivation for consumers, and as a result is extremely important to producers to fulfil this. Familiarity, taste, labels, price and accessibility easily influence consumers.

The process of wine making has been constantly evolving to keep up with the sophisticated palettes of today’s consumers. The growing diversity of today’s wines is a testament of its cultural and geographic reach.

Measures of Quality in Wine

Wine is made in many different varieties, flavours and levels of quality, which in recent times, are more readily available. In addition to the Winemakers, we rely on expert opinions in the industry to evaluate quality of wines, including wine writers and critics, sommeliers and wine brokers. Coming from a range of backgrounds there are instances where wine professionals disagree about the quality of wine. It is difficult to when there are a number of criteria used to assess the quality of wine to obtain an objective conclusion.

The importance of Sensory Testing and Evaluation in Wine

When evaluating wine we focus on Aroma, Taste and Mouthfeel, more specifically acidity and length. It can be more challenging to identify the exact flavour without having the distinct palette or knowledge to be able to build one. Having a trained sensory panel is key to measuring the attributes, defects or taints of wine more systematically. Sensory evaluation is not subject to individual opinion as one person may be more sensitive to a certain flavour than another. The entire evaluation allows us to identify weather the products quality meets the required standards. Within the conclusion we are also able to identify the cause and modify where needed, to meet the acceptability of a product according to its sensory expectations. This knowledge is invaluable to winemakers, allowing informed decisions to be made based on the sensory evidence.

By completing sensory evaluation when using the objective sensory terms, service and education is enhanced for distributors and consumers.

Challenges of Sensory Evaluation in Wine

Being part of a quality control team there can be some variability of human senses and perception that can have an impact on the sensory evaluation. It is crucial that all panellists are trained to the same standards and are each carefully selected. Many companies have in house sensory panels; it can be beneficial for the chosen panellists to have an existing knowledge of the product. There are some more complex sensory terminology used in the wine industry which requires more discriminative methods to identify flavours. Using the same flavour standards and training for a single panel we can gather a more definitive evaluation.

Many of the challenges can be eliminated by correctly preparing for an evaluation in a neutral environment with no bias.

If you want to find the right Sensory Solution for you read more about FlavorActiV Sensory Training here.