Application of Polarized Projective Mapping combined with Ultra Flash Profiling to a complex − high fatigue product category: The case of Greek grape marc spirits

Abstract

Grape marc spirits in general and Greek grape marc spirits specifically, is an alcoholic drinks category with very limited information on its sensory properties, despite its commercial importance. Polarized Projective Mapping (PPM), a method first introduced by Ares et al. in 2013, is promising but has not been applied in combination with Ultra Flash Profiling (UFP) to sets of many and complex-high fatigue products such as spirits. Our objective was to employ UFP combined to PPM in order to profile a set of 39 grape marc spirits from Greece and relate the results to several production information of the samples such as raw materials, origin region and distillation style, and to evaluate the combination of those methods in such a category. Projective Mapping was used for pole selection and five sessions of PPM followed for the evaluation of all samples. Unlike application in previous studies we had assessors carry out the UFP task first before each PPM session. ‘Global PPM’ and ‘Global UFP’ product spaces gave 39.7% and 43.1% explained variances in the first two axes respectively, when data from all sessions and assessors were analyzed in STATIS. The biggest impact for classification of the products was from the grape varieties used as raw material, even though distillation style had a serious impact as well. Clear product clusters were obtained and combination of those methods worked well for that category. Nevertheless, there is still a need for a global method of defining the “poles” in large sample sets.