Describing sensory experiences of wine tasting based on opposites: naïve versus expert dimensions

Opposites play a significant role in human perception, thinking and language. Our research focuses on the sensory experience of wine tasting. Expert sommeliers use a set of conventionalized scales to evaluate wine with most of the descriptors being properties organized along scales of opposition, e.g. Veiled/Cloudy-Brilliant (Visual Limpidity). In the initial phase, we analysed the sensory terms used in seven well-known Italian wine guidebooks, the terms used in the production specifications of 12 types of wine and those used in the official AIS scales. We thus established a list of 63 sensory properties. We then carried out two studies involving five hundred Italian standard consumers (18–60 years old) in order to identify the naïve dimensions elicited by the 63 properties in relation to red and white wines, respectively. A comparison between the results of the two studies and the AIS scales revealed: (i) correspondence, i.e. the two naïve poles are the same on the AIS scale, e.g. Heavy-Light; (ii) a mismatch between the sensory dimensions which were being focused on, e.g. Rich/Full-Lacking (in structure/in body) on the naïve complexity dimension, but Lacking-Very Intense is the AIS olfactory analysis of intensity; (iii) a descriptor occupying an intermediate position on the expert scale became a pole on the naïve scale and the two extremes were not the same, e.g. on the AIS scale, Limpid is the intermediate term on the Veiled-Brilliant dimension, but in terms of naïve dimensions, Limpid is opposed to Veiled while Brilliant is the opposite pole to Opaque.