What is sensory science? How to make your wine tasting more objective | 3

Isabelle Lesschaeve Author

Your wine tasting data doesn’t have to be subjective! Using sensory science, we can make it more objective, so it can support your business decisions

What is sensory science? How to make your wine tasting more objective | 3

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I’m amazed that sensory science still isn’t properly understood or used to its fullest in the wine industry. There is so much opportunity to learn from your products and your consumers using this scientific approach to tasting wine. That’s right – tasting wine can (and should!) be objective, not subjective, to allow you to use this data to support your business’ strategic decisions.

If you aren’t really sure where to begin in implementing the power of sensory science into your winery or tasting room, today’s episode will be perfect for you. I’m discussing the big differences between traditional wine judging and sensory tasting, including what sensory science really is, and providing you with four things you can take away and try out in your business today.

From reducing bias to training your tasters – it’s all in this episode of We Taste Wine Differently!

In today’s episode, I'm talking about:

• What sensory science actually is
• The difference between sensory tasting and traditional wine judging methods
• Why blind tastings matter,
• What makes sensory testing objective, and
• How even small wineries can implement these techniques without needing a huge budget
• Four practical steps to bring more objectivity into your analytical tasting, no matter your budget

Links from today’s episode:

• Lesschaeve I. and Noble A.C. (2022). Sensory Evaluation of Wine. In: Understanding and Managing Wine Quality (2nd Edition). Reynolds A. G. (ed.). Woodhead Publishing Series in Food Science, Technology, and Nutrition.

• Read the recap article from this episode.

Your Free Resource:

Discover the five mistakes turning your guests away – and how to fix them!

Connect with me, Isabelle:

• Learn more about working with me on my website

• Connect with me on LinkedIn

• Subscribe to my YouTube channel

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to today's episode of We Taste Wine Differently. I'm your host, Isabelle Lesschaeve, a wine sensory scientist, educator and tasting coach. But you may ask what's a sensory scientist, Isabelle, what's sensory science? Yes, you're right. I think it's time to unveil the power of sensory science and how it can fuel the wine industry with valuable insights.

Bonjour, and welcome to We Taste Wine Differently, the podcast designed to empower you, wine professionals, and help you truly connect with today's wine consumers through the power of sensory experiences. Each week, we will explore practical science-backed methods and actionable insights rooted in sensory and consumer science to transform how you taste, talk about and present wine, ultimately [00:01:00] enhancing the tasting room experience and building long-term relationships with your consumers. Are you ready to taste wine differently and adapt to today's changing dynamics? Let's dive in.

To be frank, I'm amazed that I still have this conversation today, almost 30 years after studying a sensory program in one of the major US wineries, which used sensory data to its fullest. Most of the wine industry, I think, still misses the opportunity to learn from their products and their consumers using this scientific approach to wine tasting.

For example, recently I was having a conversation with a vendor helping wine businesses create desirable wine profiles, feeding consumer psychographics data, sales data and chemistry data into an AI engine. I asked if the AI model also included [00:02:00] tasting data. The answer was striking. “Oh no. Tasting data is too subjective.”

So I mentioned, what about sensory data? He replied, “oh yeah, we work with marketing”. Well, sensory science is not part of marketing. Definitely a, a great partner of marketing. So obviously we need to rehabilitate the science of sensory tasting as a reliable approach in the wine world. Listen, it's not me saying it in my little corner.

Sensory tasting has been used for decades by major CPG companies to guide their product development, their marketing and communication. Sensory scientists follow ISO guidelines. We train future sensory scientists in academic programs around the world, and we have our professional societies and conferences together and continue to learn and evolve.

Sensory tasting is about collecting [00:03:00] analytical testing data and consumer tasting feedback objectively and in a meaningful way. So in today's episode, you will discover how sensory tasting differs from the traditional wine judging methods that wine tasting can be objective. That’s what makes sensory tasting an asset to aid with your strategic decisions and how you can start bringing more objectivity to your analytical tasting whatever the size of your operations and your budget.

Let's start with this basic question. What is sensory science? As an educator, I like a good definition, so as I mentioned, we follow industry standards. In the US it's the ASTM, the American Society of Testing Materials, and the ASTM sensory committee defines sensory science as a scientific discipline that uses human senses to assess consumer products. [00:04:00]

It involves evoking, measuring, analyzing, and interpreting reactions to stimuli perceived through the senses of sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing. Well, it's a good definition, but maybe a bit obscure and a bit reductive.

In plain language, I like to say that sensory science is the study of how people perceive products through their senses, their senses of sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing. It's all about capturing people's perception during a wine tasting. Imagine this, you are holding a glass of wine. You notice its color, smell, its aroma.

Take a sip and feel its taste, aroma again, and the texture on your palette. Sensory tasting techniques break these perceptions down into measurable component to understand exactly what you're perceiving. And yes, hearing is part of it too. [00:05:00] Have you ever paid attention to the sound of bubbles bubbling from a glass of sparkling wine?

It's fascinating how the sound can be so different from one wine style to another. You should try it now. Let's talk about the elephant in the room. Isn't sensory tasting just wine tasting with a science-y name? Well, there are commonalities of course, but also major differences. Let's dive in. Traditional wine tasting focuses on assessing quality.

It's about judging a wine's appearance, smell, and palette, using a very defined framework. Wine judging is about compliance. Wine judges ask questions like, is the wine sound or do I detect off notes that would make it non-marketable. Is this wine typical of its regional appellation to deserve the appellation stamp of approval, [00:06:00] or is this wine the best of its class when judging in a wine competition?

Wine judging is why we need people with product expertise to judge the quality of the wine, have a rational explanation for why a wine passes or not, the judgment, before releasing it on the market. And yes, the end goal is market success.

Contrarily, sensory tasting isn't about judging quality. It's about characterizing product perceptions without preconceived notions. It's about capturing the consumer's feedback on different wines. We can summarize the goals of sensory tasting with these three types of questions we usually ask. Are these products perceived as being different? Let's say you have produced three wines from three different clones of Sauvignon blanc, but you have made them with the same wine making conditions, so you can [00:07:00] determine the effect of the clone on the wine sensory profile.

The question we ask is, do they taste the same? If no, the next question we ask is. How are they different? For example, do they have distinct aroma notes or do they have similar aroma notes with different intensities? One clone being more intense than the others. And the last question we will ask is, do they target consumers like this wine or do they fit a particular consumption occasion?

So sensory techniques can go deeper into each type of question and provide valuable insights every time. After we collect the data from these three types of questions, we analyze the statistical significance of the results and assess the risk of the conclusion we share with others. We can determine, for example, if we are confident at 95% with these [00:08:00] results, that the three clones makes wines with different profiles. That one clone particularly expressed the grapefruit aroma and that Sauvignon blanc drinkers at this price point enjoyed the wine.

Then as a business owner, you can decide to proceed further with this clone or not. Sensory data basically aids in business decisions with robust data instead of relying on one or two individuals based on their preferences. But what makes sensory tasting data more objective, and for a moment, let’s park sensory tests with consumers because when asking people for their hedonic appreciation, their response is naturally subjective. However, the objectivity of consumer tests comes with the fact that we carry those tests to have the outcome reliable, but it'll be the subject of another episode.

So let's just focus [00:09:00] on analytical sensory tasting, technical sensory tasting. So what makes it more objective? Three things. First, the way we conduct the tasting. Second, the group of tasters that we work with, and third, the type of questions we ask. Let's start with the first reason, which is the way we conduct the tasting.

The data collection follows an experimental design to minimize cognitive and physiological biases. In other words, we do blind testing all the time. Tasters have no a priori information about how the product was made, where it was produced, or by whom. The less the sensory tasters know, the more objective the evaluation of the wine in each glass that they taste.

And remember, we are measuring perceptions of sensations captured by our senses. The wine [00:10:00] components evoke the sensations. And the perceptions correspond to our brain, interpretations of what we smell, taste, and feel. And as soon as the tasters access more information, their brain will start using it to interpret the sensory perceptions, and that's when the tasting becomes really a brainy exercise, a cognitive exercise more than a perceptual evaluation.

You could say, of course, that it's important for the tasters to integrate all this information in their evaluation. Yes. Again, maybe in some technical evaluations, like judging a wine compliance with a particular standard. In that case, the judge need to know what to compare each wine to, so they are often given minimum information about the wine type, style, origin or vintage.

These data points are added to the tester's knowledge and other preconceived notions that the [00:11:00] expert has collected over the years of their practice. And all these accumulated information create expectation of what a wine should taste. So instead of letting the wine express itself and using their senses to appreciate every aspect of the wine, the wine judge uses a mental evaluation grid to check on and off the presence or absence of key characteristics required for giving a seal of approval.

It becomes a cognitive task more than a perceptual evaluation. That's what we call a top-down process. But when the tasting goal is to assess different winery trials and select a new technique, or to conduct a competitive tasting of different brands to position your wines versus the competition.

Then blind testing is critical to ensure that the outcome is based only on perceptions of the liquid in each bottle [00:12:00] rather than other cues that could create preconceived notions or expectations, again, of what the perception would be like because our brain likes shortcuts. If we see a red wine, our brain will filter out any other perception so that our perception will logically fit the red wine.

Yes, color and appearance are often the first biases we eliminate in sensory tasting. You may have heard about this experiment conducted by Gil Morrot and colleagues at the University of Bordeaux. The researchers created a perceptual illusion where a white of wine was colored with an odorless red dye. A panel of 54 wine experts and students was asked to describe the aroma of both the original white wine and the same wine colored in red.

Of course, the tasters didn't know [00:13:00] about the trick. That was the point. The point was to see if the color influenced the perception of aromas. While the results showed that when the white wine was colored in red, it was described using typical red wine descriptors. Whereas we would expect the two wines to have similar aromatic descriptions, right?

Therefore, the visual cues, the color, strongly influence the perception and verbalization of wine aromas by those experts. Basically, the color information bypass the response to the aromatic perceptions to access the expert red wine attribute memory, and allow for description of a red wine. In contrast, sensory science is all about minimizing cognitive and physiological biases to get closer to an objective tasting.

Blind tasting is standard practice for us. We strip away all the biases we can. Wines are served [00:14:00] anonymously in glasses coded with three digit codes, and sometimes we use black glasses to mask the color when we want tasters to focus just on aroma and flavor. And in the Morrot experiment, expert would have described the two wines similarly if they had used black glasses, but that was not the point, the point was to study the influence of color.

In fact, we analyze wine perceptions for what they are, not what we think they should be. That's a big difference with judging wine. Now let's look at the tasting participants and how they could help us get more objective tasting data. First of all, let's be clear, these tasters are not selected based on their wine knowledge.

They are selected based on three aspects, sensory aspects, their normal sensitivity to sense and taste. Their ability to use basic descriptive words to describe wine beyond terms like, I like it or I don't [00:15:00] like it. You know, they can start talking about fruitiness, floral. They don't have to have very precise words, but at least they can articulate a bit more what they perceive, and of course, the most important factor, their ability to partake in a series of tastings.

And we work with a group of tasters. Why a group? Having 10 to 20 people perform a sensory tasting accounts for the natural variability in how people perceive a wine. Even if sensory tasters are screened for normal sensibility, natural variability occurs in detecting certain sensations, aromas or taste, due to genetic and cultural background.

For example, some people are bitter blind and others are very sensitive to the bitter taste. We don't rely on just one person or a few people's opinion because of this variability. Since we collect [00:16:00] data and measure perceptions to make decision, the power of the tasting outcome relies on the number of participants.

Again, these tasters are not wine experts, however, they go through basic training to ensure they understand the sensory test they will participate in. They recognize basic perceptions important in wine such as acidity, sweetness, astringency, common aromas, especially in, you know, the typical aromas, uh, that you have in your wine.

They speak the same wine sensory language, so they understand each other and you will understand the results, and they are repeatable in sensory measurements of basic wine perceptions. By the end of the training, the sensory panelists will provide objective data based on their sensory perception, not their opinion.

Consistent data about the wine sensory attributes. Basically, we train them to be more repeatable. Of course, this training [00:17:00] requires constant reinforcements like training for any skills. Finally, let's look at the questions we ask sensory panelists to answer. The simplest sensory tests consist of asking tasters to make a choice, for example.

Among these four glasses are poured two wines, wine A and wine B. Two glasses contain wine A and two glasses contain wine B. You are asked to smell and taste the four glasses from left to right and find the two glasses that contain product A and the two glasses that contain wine B.

This is a difference test, more specifically a tetra test. There are many different tests available in our toolbox, and we select those tests according to the nature of the product, the number of participants that we can gather for the test. The next level of sensory [00:18:00] test consists of ordering samples based on one sensory perception, what we call a ranking test, for example.

Rank these five samples according to their increased perceived sweetness from the least sweet to the most sweet. The most complex sensory test is called sensory profiling. We ask panelists to identify each perception that they have when smelling and tasting a glass of wine, and to measure the perception intensity on a given scale for this level of complexity.

Panelists need to go through dozens of hours of training. It's intense, but the results are worth it. Trained panelists are discerning, repeatable, and the group is in alignment. When we do what it takes to get there, making humans assess wine objectively at this level of precision requires hours of training.

I won't deny it, but in general, [00:19:00] you won't need that level of data in your winery. The first two tests I listed different tests, making a choice or ranking test on wine sensory perception, require minimum training, as well as just a basic description of wine. If they go through an aroma training that I mentioned in episode two when using the wine aroma wheel.

What you need to remember is that the sensory toolbox includes many possible tests. The choice depends on the test objective, the test goal, what you want to demonstrate, and the group of tasters you can rely on. I wrote a whole book chapter on the different sensory tests applied to wine, and you can find the reference in the show notes.

Alright, maybe I went too deep on that subject. Does it sound too complex or unrealistic to implement proper sensory tasting in your winery? Well, it doesn't have to be. I really wanted to [00:20:00] give you a full picture of what is required, but in this last section, I give you four easy to implement suggestions to transition your technical wine tastings into more objective sensory data collection.

And the essential parameter of a more objective tasting is to blind the tasters from any information or any cue that could alter their sensory perceptions consciously or unconsciously. Remember, our brain plays tricks. So for these suggestions, let's put the context right here. It's about the technical tastings you may conduct internally to help you make a business decision about the selection of a blend, the assessment of a vineyard, or cellar trial, or an assessment of your brand versus the competition.

So my first suggestion is to stop sharing any information prior to the tasting that's easy to implement, [00:21:00] maybe. So, the less participants know about the project technicalities, or all the hopes you put into the results or the investments it took to get there, the better your chance to minimize any preconceived notions that could bias the taster's perceptions.

Easier than than done? I know the wine making team is probably highly involved in those tastings. They know a lot. That's why the second thing you can do to minimize some of the knowledge biases is to have the tasting led by a neutral person. What do I mean by a neutral person? Someone who is not involved in the project for which the tasting is required.

This tasting moderator coordinates the tasting and gives instruction to the tasters. It's also the person who moderates the discussion post-tasting. If you want to reach a consensus, the [00:22:00] tasting moderator's words, impromptu remarks or non-verbal communication can bias the taster's perception. So you really want to remove anybody in the know, especially the wine making team.

Who made the products and know, knows a lot from this role of coordinating or even setting up the tasting because as I said, they know more than anybody else and it's for their benefits because you're, they really want to know the answer to the questions. The third suggestion is to blind the wine samples, how to do that?

Well, serve the wines in coded glasses. As I mentioned previously, you can use three digit codes, uh, printed on the labeled or written on labels, or use a non stinky marker to mark the glasses. Don't want to use any marker with a strong odor because it'll disturb the tasters, and of course, keep the key of the codes outside of you.

Another [00:23:00] thing that you can do to blind the samples is to rotate the sample order. So tasters don't taste the wine in the same order. It's particularly important to minimize the effect of the first sample tasted 'cause it usually rates higher and the carryover effects. Some samples may have flavors carrying over the next sample and you really want to minimize that.

Finally, hide the bottles outside of the room when you conduct the tasting. 'cause they might have, you know, signs, written labels, uh, printed labels on the, uh, on the bottle that your tasters will recognize and it would give them cues and indications of what they are going to taste. Again, you want to blind everything to have the true perception experienced by the tasters.

The last suggestion is about the tasters. For important business decision, you want to collect sensory data [00:24:00] from a solid group of tasters. You may ask as many people from the winery as possible to participate, and if you need to invite family members or acquaintances to grow the number, it means you need to plan the tasting in advance carefully.

Really, it's worth the effort when financial or strategic decisions are at stake. So before the sensory tasting, take the time to train the tasters in sensory evaluation and the test they're going to perform so they can understand what is expected from them. This basic sensory training can include basic taste and aroma recognition.

Several practices to rank wine according to a sensory attribute or training on how to perform a difference test. Of course, tasters don't need to go through this basic training every time they participate in a sensory tasting at your place. Once a year is a great start. [00:25:00] So why not use your seasonal staff onboarding period to include every potential taster in this sensory training?

Alright, I realize I'm going quickly. Again, you can find more information in the chapter I wrote, and you will find the references in the show notes, or let's have a chat. I do host workshops to help implement objectives sensory testing progressively in winery operations. This can be done virtually or in person. You'll find how to contact me in the show notes as well.

Well, that's a wrap. As you might appreciate, the only similarity between traditional wine judging and sensory tasting is that we smell and sip a product from the same wine glass. The tasting processes are different. The way we capture responses are different, and the tasters partaking in a tasting have different backgrounds and [00:26:00] skills.

But I hope that this episode helped you appreciate the distinctions between sensory tasting and conventional wine judging. I shared the potential to bring more objectivity in your tasting, highlighting sensory tasting techniques as valuable tools for making strategic decisions. Finally, I gave you four practical approaches to enhance the objectivity of your tasting process, regardless of your operational skill or budget.

And that's it for today's episode of We Taste Wine Differently. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe or follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to learn more about how I can help you and your team implement a sensory driven tasting experience, visit my website at innovinum.com. It's I-N-N-O-V-I-N-U-M.com, and [00:27:00] I have a gift waiting for you there.

It's a free resource to discover the five mistakes turning guests away, and how to fix them fast. It includes a tool to assess practices in your tasting room, you will also find the direct link to download this paper and the tool in the show notes. À bientôt!

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