Flavor Description of White Wine by "Expert" and Nonexpert Wine Consumers

Two groups of wine consumers described the flavor characteristics of six unlabeled white wines and attempted to match descriptions to wines in subsequent tastings. One group was experienced in describing wine flavor and another group had no experience. Experienced subjects used more terms describing odor qualities and more terms with concrete (vs abstract) references. Most of the terms were used by only one person for a given wine. Experts matched descriptions to wines better than nonexperts (mean correct = 2.6 for experts vs 1.8 for nonexperts). Composite descriptions assembled from the nonexpert group were more often matched correctly than their individual descriptions. Experts’ errors when matching descriptions were related to discriminability.