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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Burgundy red wines: Representation of potential for aging

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Abstract This study was conducted to investigate wine professionals’ perception of aging potential of red wines. In the first experiment, 41 wine professionals assessed sixteen commercial Burgundy red wines via a binary categorization task, an aging potential rating task, and a hedonic rating task and an analytic sensory evaluation including an astringency and a bitterness rating task. The wines were also analyzed by High-Pressure Liquid Chromatography with a UV Detector (HPLC-UV) and their color was evaluated using Hue (H∗), Lightness (L∗) and Chroma (C∗) measurements. Results showed that the wines were split into two clusters on the basis of aging potential judgements indicating that the wine professionals had a collective representation of the characteristics of a wine with a potential for aging. Wines with a potential for aging were characterized by low L∗ and H∗ and high C∗ values, a high astringency and a higher concentration of anthocyanins and polyphenol. In a second experiment, 34 wine professionals performed three potential for aging binary sorting task based on (1) visual assessment only, (2) olfacto-gustatory assessment only and (3) overall assessment (visual plus in-mouth). Results showed that the sensory modalities tested were complementary and that visual or olfacto-gustatory assessments alone were not sufficient to explain overall judgments of aging potential.