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

Opposites are central to many areas in the fields of Psychology and Linguistics, but they are also fundamental to the technical scales used to describe wine (e.g., the Wine and Spirit Education Trust evaluation scales). The present study explores whether it is useful to refer to opposites in order to model Vietnamese standard (vs. expert) consumers' understanding of the wine descriptors frequently used in Italian texts. Sixty-four terms used in Product Specifications and popular Italian wine guidebooks to talk about the sensory properties of red and white wines (e.g., Hazy— Viet. Đục; Bright—Viet Sang; Complex—Viet Nhiều hương vị; Immature—Viet Chưa ngấu, etc.) were presented to 300 Vietnamese native speakers. They were asked to select what they considered to be the opposite property. Opposites were easily found by the participants, and, interestingly, they agreed with each other on those which were the most frequently chosen. Thought-provoking similarities and differences were revealed when these finding were compared with those of a twin study involving Italian participants. Practical Applications: In order to ensure effective marketing in the wine industry and to prevent misunderstandings, it is not only important that the dimensions underlying certain terms used by experts (i.e., sommeliers, oenologists, and wine experts) are similar to those understood by nonexperts (i.e., standard consumers), but it is also vital to ascertain whether nonexperts belonging to different cultures understand the same terms in a similar way. The results emerging from the present study suggest that it may be useful to use opposites to describe the sensory properties of wine to Vietnamese standard consumers, just as it is for Italian consumers. The research resulted in a list of terms which are understood in a similar way and another list with those which are understood differently. From an applicative point of view, this may be interesting for the marketing of wine in international contexts.