Sensory Evaluation Exercise

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Sensory Evaluation Exercise
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Defining Taste

• Both a verb (to eat or drink) or a noun (a manner
  of style)
• Confusion comes from descriptions from one person
  to another
• Therefore how do you judge wine accurately
  without personal opinion

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Defining Taste

• Tasting wine is an art or a style that needs to
  be learned or acquired and appreciated
• You should taste all wines the same every single
  time (create a ritual that works for you and do
  not change it)
• You will create a discipline known as sensory
  evaluation (which can be scientific in nature)

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Defining Taste

• Never let your overall opinion be dictated by
  another (do not change your habits unless you
  wish to change)
• With this, you must experiment to let your tastes
  grow and change

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So why learn to taste effectively using sensory
evaluation techniques?

• To hopefully enjoy a beverage more
• To match a beverage to a food to maximize the
  quality or strengths of both
• To save money when comparing products of similar
  quality
• To detect possible faults in a product (both for
  safety and enjoyment)
• To increase the enjoyment of digestion (stimulate
  the digestive process)

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Remember that a quality wine comes from the
following

• the climate and soil conditions
• the grape variety in question
• ability to grow the grapes effectively and
  producing the wine
• a client that believes that the particular wine
  has a quality and is willing to pay for it

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Wines with superior quality

• purity with no measurable faults
• visual appeal (color and clarity)
• richness of aromatics
• good length related to flavor (lingering)
• define the finish (most times looking for a clean
  finish)
• a distinctive personality
• harmony and balance

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Sensory Evaluation

• any beverage served during a meal should match
  itself to the food being served with it
• beverage should complement the food, food should
  complement the beverage
• Can be done by either matching or antagonizing
  components

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Sensory Evaluation

• managers and staff must be familiar with all
  types of beverages being served
• many do not taste alcohol with a menu and
  therefore do not understand how they match up
• beverages must match stimulus detected by our
  five senses

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The Natural Tasting Sequence

• Hearing
• Visual
• Olfactory or smell
• Tactile or touch
• Gustatory or taste

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Hearing

• able to stimulate mind but also able to confuse
  or change our concentration levels
• example liquid cascading into a glass

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Sight

• human eye is complex
• 70 percent of the bodys sense receptors
• consists of 100 million rods and Cones
• neurons perform at least 10 billion calculations
  per second
• every second 10 trillion particles of light pass
  through the eyes

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Sight

• to see color, three elements are necessary
• a light source,
• something that is lit,
• the ability to perceive it
• perception can be affected by background color,
  type of lighting, quality of glass, etc.

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Sight

• remember that the color of a wine is created
  through the absorption of light rays as they pass
  through the liquid
• example red wine appears red due to the
  absorption of other colors

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Sight

• lighting plays one of the most important roles
• difference between natural light and artificially
  created (such as fluorescent)
• background colors also play an effect
• wine glasses will reflect 360 degrees of color
  from its surroundings

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Smell

• 200-800 aromatics in wine
• remember to smell anything, it must be in a
  gaseous state to reach our receptor cells,
  dissolved in the mucous lining and stimulate
  nerve endings
• difference in smelling an odor is between
  exposure from the air and exposure from a liquid
  (wine glass design)

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Smell

• in order to smell, we must breathe in more than
  normal
• 20 of all available odors reach receptors during
  normal breathing
• only 2 actually gets through the nose to reach
  the sensory patch

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Smell

• remember to maintain the same techniques always
  in regards to breathing in deeply for assessment
• trying to avoid fatigue on the senses by spacing
  out intake of the odor

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Smell

• humans than have the ability to detect 10,000
  different odors
• this ability is linked by our health, our own
  individual response level, environmental factors
• difference in perception can vary by a factor as
  much as 1 hundred thousand from person to person

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Wine has three facets

• 1) Intensity of odors
• Three main sources
• Fruit or the grape itself
• Vinification process (addition of ingredients or
  blending)
• Ageing of the wine (wood used)

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2) Aroma

• Odors that come directly from the grape only
  (primary odor)
• Most odor comes from the fermentation
• Descriptions can be found on the Davis Wheel

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3) Bouquet

• secondary odor from fermentation (yeast
  development and growth)
• tertiary odor from aging (wood extraction,
  chemical conversion within the bottle)

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Touch (Tactile Response)

• two basic factors to consider
• 1) Body or texture of the wine
• also considered mouth-feel
• dependent upon content of tannins, alcohols,
  sugars, etc
• can also be related to viscosity

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2) Astringency or Acid Content

• a reaction to physical properties
• also called mouth feel (furry feeling on your
  teeth from grape skins)
• acid is extracted from both the grape skins, any
  stems or leaves crushed
• wood tannins are softer (due to charring the
  casks or repeated use)
• Grape tannins felt all over mouth, wood felt on
  the sides of the mouth

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2) Astringency or Acid Content

• can detect four in mouth assessments of a wine
• Pressure (wine components generate different
  pressures (tannins))
• temperature
• common chemical sense, (warning against common
  chemical irritants)
• pain or irritations such a spicy, burning,
  itching (sulpher dioxide in levels above 150
  parts per million)

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Astringency Wheel
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Common Wine Acids
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Malo/Lactic Fermentation
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Taste

• works in combination with smell
• worst of the senses in humans
• average human has 3,000 taste buds
• each has a very short life's span (4-7 days for
  complete turnover)
• sense four basic stimulation's saltiness,
  sweetness, acidity, and bitterness ( possible
  fifth one related to spicy or savory (umami))
• chemical must be dissolved in saliva

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Sugar Levels

• Brix
• Scale of measuring the dissolved sugar in grape
  juice
• One degree brix app. 18 g of sugar per liter
• Sweetness Levels
• 10 g/l 1 sugar

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Sugar Levels
Sweetness Levels (10 g/l 1 sugar)
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White Wine Balance
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White Wine Balance
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Red Wine Balance
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Red Wine Balance
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Red Wine Balance
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Red Wine Balance
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Tasting Exercise