The Chardonnay wine olfactory concept revisited: A stable core of volatile compounds, and fuzzy boundaries

Abstract An earlier study by the same team showed that Chardonnay wines have common olfactory properties by which wine experts can recognize them. The specific Chardonnay olfactory space was also tentatively linked to the relative concentrations of 29 volatile compounds, regarded as possible aroma-impact compounds. The question now is whether or not those initial results hold independently of the sample under consideration, that is, whether these sensory and chemical spaces are vintage-specific. A series of investigations was conducted on a new set of 46 wines (23 Chardonnay wines and 23 non Chardonnay wines) using the same sensory (wine typicality level) and physico-chemical (Gas Chromatog…