Los vinos tintos españoles de calidad, ¿a qué huelen según los expertos?

Abstract

The main objective of this work is to characterize the aroma of a set of Spanish red wines belonging to different segments of the Spanish market as well as to determine the relationship between the sensory aroma descriptors and quality assessed by a group of Spanish experts. With the ultimate goal of disclosing the sensory attributes that make that a red wine is perceived as a quality exemplar by a group of experts. On the one hand, a trained panel characterized the aroma of 96 Spanish wines belonging to three price segments of the market (premium, highstandard, low-standard). Using statistical criteria and combining similar individual terms, eleven robust terms were built. On the other hand, a panel of experts consistently evaluated the quality of the same samples. The aroma profile of wines perceived lower in quality were characterized with nuances such as: “animal”, “undergrowth”, “vegetable”, “dried fruit” or “evolved/oxidized”. The role of some terms depends on the category or group of wines (premium, high-standard, low-standard). Thus, the presence of “dried fruit” nuances increases the perceived quality of the premium wines, but in the other two categories the opposite effect is observed, in which the “berry/fresh fruit” aroma increases their quality. Results show that orthonasal aroma perception (direct nasal route) is able to explain the quality of the studied wines. Besides, the pair of aromas “woody/animal” seems to be the most relevant in wine quality perception. However, the role of other terms depends on the category of the wine group. Furthermore, attributes related with oxidation/evolution are especially responsible for the low quality of some of the younger wines