Effects of tasting technique – sequential tasting vs. mixed tasting – on perception of dry white wine and blue mould cheese

The object of this study was to evaluate by means of descriptive sensory analysis the effect of mixed tasting on the perception of dry white wine and blue mould cheese, and to establish whether the tasting technique (sequential vs. mixed tasting) significantly affects this perception. A Swedish blue mould cheese, Bredsjö Blå, and a French blue mould cheese, Roquefort Société, and five commercial types of dry white wine were used. The same panel, selected and trained according to ISO standards, as in Nygren et al. (2002, 2003) carried out the descriptive analyses by means of a mixed tasting technique. The panel scored the same attributes for both cheese and wine as in Nygren et al. (2002, 2003). In general, the original wine attribute scores decreased more by means of mixed tasting technique than by means of sequential, while few changes of the original cheese attribute scores were observed. Overall, mixed tasting gave greater decreasing changes than sequential tasting.