Wine Tasters Research Articles

CONSUMERS' SELF-IDENTITY PERSPECTIVES ON BRAND PREFERENCES AND BOYCOTT BEHAVIOUR: AN APPLICATION OF A BLIND TASTE TEST

This research aims to reveal the relationship between the self-identity of modern individuals, who seek to find themselves by consuming in a consumer society, and their consumption preferences and behaviours through boycott behaviour. For this purpose, a study was conducted in 2024 with 322 university students in Istanbul, utilizing a blind taste test involving two products (cola and coffee) from one global and one local brand (Pepsi/Cola Turka and Starbucks/Kahve Dünyası) regarding the boycott against brands supporting Israel. According to the research findings, the participation rate in the boycott is 57%. Regardless of participation in the boycott, no statistically significant difference was found in brand preferences during the blind test among all participants. However, it was revealed that the preferences for products related to Starbucks significantly decreased among participants who supported the boycott. Although not statistically significant, a decrease was also observed for Pepsi. The primary reasons affecting participation in the boycott are emotional factors, such as a reaction to crimes against humanity and support for the oppressed. Those who did not participate in the boycott expressed their belief that the boycott or their participation would have no impact. No significant relationship was identified between the phenomenon of self-identity, which is the research's main subject, consumer preferences (participation in the boycott), and indirectly, brand preferences. The self-identity preferences of participants and non-participants in the boycott were similar, with the most commonly expressed identity definition being "human."

Metamaterial-based injection molding for the cost-effective production of whole cuts

The escalating global demand for meat products has intensified ecological concerns, underscoring the need for sustainable meat alternatives. Although current methods effectively imitate ground meat, mimicking whole cuts, which constitute 54% of the global market, remains challenging due to the lack of scalable technology. Injection molding is a massively scalable manufacturing technology developed for the polymer industry. Here, we introduce two injectable metamaterials: a thermally irreversible fat composite we named proteoleogel, and a multi-scaled meat analog produced by low-temperature extrusion. Viscoelastic screening of plant proteins identifies mung bean for its ability to stabilize complex oleogel structures, mimicking the mechanics of adipose tissue. Mechanical analysis reveals that low-temperature extrusion produces microscale isotropic fibers and mesoscale anisotropic structures mimicking muscle and fascia. These metamaterials can be injection-molded into various whole cuts, from chops to T-bones. Blinded taste tests indicate a 43% preference for our plant-based steak analog. Moreover, technical economic analysis shows injection molding is more cost-effective than 3D printing, costing $9/kg compared to $38/kg. This research represents a step in sustainable food production, offering cost-effective and scalable solutions for the entire meat market.

“Consumers’ Preferences Toward Farmed Salmon in China: Integrating Sensory and Choice Experiments”

ABSTRACTChina's growing demand for farmed salmon is apparent, with the country importing 190 thousand tonnes valued at over $1.12 billion in 2023. In response, the Chinese government allowed rainbow trout to be labelled and sold as salmon starting in 2018, bridging the gap between domestically produced trout and imported Atlantic salmon. This study aimed to explore how country‐of‐origin information influences Chinese consumers' sensory perceptions and willingness to pay (WTP) for salmon. Using a within‐subject design with two evaluation rounds (blind and informed) we combined hedonic liking where Chinese consumers rated three salmon samples (from Norway, Chile, and China) with a discrete choice experiment. The results indicated that under the blind taste test, Chinese consumers found no significant difference in sensory preference between domestic rainbow trout and imported Atlantic salmon from Norway and Chile. However, when informed of the product origins, consumer preferences shifted in favor of Norwegian and Chilean Atlantic salmon. Furthermore, consumers' WTP for salmon was unaffected by the country of production unless provenance was disclosed, at which point the origin significantly influenced their preferences. Ecolabels, price, overall liking, education, frequency of aquatic food consumption, and prior experience with salmon were also found to impact WTP for salmon. These insights offer valuable insights for salmon producers/importers/marketers to customize their approaches in response to consumer preferences, refine product positioning, and seize upon opportunities within the competitive salmon market in China.

Unfolding humanistic wine tasting, based on wine professionals’ biographical expressions

In our time, wine-related industries express a growing demand for understanding new ideas about wine. This article explores how professional wine tasters develop their knowledge. Based on the idea of bildung as hermeneutic interpretation, we argue that there are three dominant ideas about how knowledge of wine can be approached: first, as an acquired canon; second, as a systematic tool; and third, as a search process. The intertwinement of these perspectives is exemplified by four autobiographical stories about experiences of learning, working with, and developing wine knowledge. One story is the first author's own autobiography; the others are published works by influential wine tasters. Autobiographical stories add a novel humanistic approach to explorations of wine knowledge, focusing on interpretation of experiences.In the discussion, the three different approaches to knowledge acquisition are related to how they support our understanding of different aspects of wine. We argue that canonic and systematic knowledge tends to be limited to conventional and technical aspects, while knowledge of the individuality of more unconventional wines and their aesthetic aspects is acquired through a search process. With increased influences of humanistic expressions in the world of wine, a greater focus on knowledge-seeking approaches to wine is required.

Investigating temperature fluctuations in the wine and liquor maritime supply chain from South Africa to the United Kingdom: A case study

This study explored temperature fluctuations in dry shipping containers transporting wine and liquor along maritime supply chains. It also examined how these variations affect product quality, and evaluated the effectiveness of thermal foil container liners in mitigating temperature changes. Temperature trials were conducted from the South African loading depot and concluded at the first distribution centre in the United Kingdom. Ambient temperature sensors were placed on cartons of wine and liquor inside the thermal container liner and between the thermal liner and the door of the container. Weather data was also collected during the trials. Temperature profiles showed large fluctuations in temperature inside containers because of day and night cycles while the containers were stacked at the departure and destination ports, posing challenges for supply chain management. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the temperature profiles, whereas logit analysis was used to determine the impact of the thermal container liner on the temperatures to which the wine and liquor were exposed. Blind tastings were used to evaluate product quality after exposure to temperature fluctuations. Results showed that thermal liners significantly reduced temperature variability, which is critical for maintaining wine and liquor quality. Despite this, blind tastings confirmed that some products were negatively affected by temperature deviations. The study recommends the use of thermal foil liners for maritime transport of wine and liquor to minimise product damage and financial losses. This finding is particularly relevant for exporters aiming to preserve the quality of their wine and liquor throughout long-distance shipping routes.

For Joe

ABSTRACT A loving tribute to a psychoanalytic leader, Joseph D. Lichtenberg, who not only was a foremost psychoanalytic educator but also a model for respectful inclusivity of different theories and ideas. This tribute illustrates not only Lichtenberg’s love of ideas but also his appreciation of life, good food, good wine, art, and literature.

Zooming in small family wineries: exploring service quality, loyalty and the moderating role of wine involvement

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the role of wine involvement in moderating the effect of winery service quality on loyalty toward small family wineries.Design/methodology/approachThis study used a structured questionnaire. The survey was distributed to wine tourists who visited small family wineries located in Crete, Greece and a total of 216 usable questionnaires were collected for the study. To analyze the data, the study used partial least squares structural equation modeling.FindingsThe results reveal that wine involvement moderates the effects of winery service quality on wine tourists’ loyalty. Specifically, staff behavior affects the loyalty toward wine tourists with low involvement more significantly compared to the wine tourists with high wine involvement. On the other hand, the quality of wine tastings affects the loyalty of wine tourists with high wine involvement more significantly in contrast with the wine tourists with low wine involvement.Practical implicationsFindings suggest that winery operators need to take into consideration wine involvement among wine tourists when they develop a winery service strategy. Operators of small family wineries can provide more customized, diverse and quality wine tastings to wine tourists with high wine involvement while prioritizing winery staff’s behavior and hospitality to those wine tourists with low wine involvement.Originality/valueThis study contributes to extant wine tourism literature by adding the effects of wine involvement on wine tourists’ loyalty toward the winery, and particularly focusing on small, family wineries.

Adapting online wine education to China: a two-study multimethod approach

Purpose Teaching wine tasting online is challenging, even given the curated digital tools of the Wine and Spirit Education Trust, a highly renowned online wine certification system is used. This paper aims to initially explore wine experts’ opinions about online wine education and subsequently examine the feasibility of customizing wine appreciation lexicons for Chinese learners. Design/methodology/approach A two-study multimethod approach was adopted. Study 1, a two-stage Delphi study, was conducted with 17 wine experts representing a number of countries, using a mix of closed/open-ended questions in an online survey. Data was collected in a market study in Study 2, conducted at agricultural markets in Thailand (pilot test) and China. Dialogues with market sellers were undertaken, evoking mental imagery of wine descriptors to explore the relevance of traditional versus local aromas and flavors in describing wine. Findings Findings concentrate on three main areas: general advantages/disadvantages of online wine education, reactions toward asynchronous/synchronous methods of wine tasting and, finally, the feasibility of customizing a wine appreciation lexicon for Chinese learners. Originality/value The study presents novel insights into the role of online wine education in China.

Emotional response to sherry wines and its relationship with emotional intelligence, level of expertise and gender

Emotional elicitation during wine consumption is a complex fenomena based on subjective experience and influence by physiological, cognitive and behavioural changes. The present study used a quasi-experimental design to examine consumers’ emotional responses during blind tastings of sherry wines, considering variables such as consumer experience, gender and Emotional Intelligence (EI). 66 participants were classified as non-expert (34) and expert (32) consumers to participate in blind tastings. Their emotional responses were measured using the EsSense25 Scale and the Perceived Emotional Intelligence was assessed through the Trait Meta-Mood Scale. Few differences were observed on emotional elicitation based on gender or consumer experience (non-expert vs expert), however the interaction of these variables was a good predictor of emotional response variance. Wine type also has an effect on emotional response, emphasising the role of sherry wine characteristics in consumer emotions. Furthermore, the Emotional Attention, one of the three dimensions of Emotional Intelligence, was found as a good predictor for the emotional responses to wine consumption. This relationship may be a key factor in understanding the differences between responsible consumption and excessive consumption, as indicated by research focused on binge drinking.

Do Winery Members and Retail Customers Place the Same Importance on Winery Service Attributes?

ABSTRACT This research study explores the factors that help distinguish between the winery visitors purchasing wine at the winery compared to non-buyers. Furthermore, the study investigates the factors that affect the conversion from winery visitors to wine club membership. The study’s sample consists of internal data collected from a winery located in Sonoma, California. The winery is a boutique and high-end winery producing around 12,000 cases per year. The winery’s primary revenue source is direct to consumer sales such as sales at the winery tasting room and wine club membership. The results of the study reveal that certain winery service quality attributes such as wine tastings and winery tours are the major factors that discern non-buyers from buyer groups. In addition, the quality of winery tasting and winery tour is the key contributor that helps winery visitors to join the wine club membership at the winery.

From the “Òstrakon” to the Art of Wine Tasting and the Measurement of Consumer Emotions

From the “Òstrakon” to the Art of Wine Tasting and the Measurement of Consumer Emotions

The future of events in the tourism industry: the case of the “Best of the Best Things to Do 2023” on TripAdvisor

PurposeThis study aims to use TripAdvisor data to identify which themes and events will attract more interest in the future of tourism activities and to provide guidance to the industry accordingly.Design/methodology/approachThis study used qualitative case study approach. To identify key themes in the top-rated activities, thematic analysis of user-generated content was conducted through MAXQDA 2020 Analytics Pro software.FindingsThe findings of this study indicate a growing trend in tourist preferences, with a notable increase in the popularity of wellness activities such as spa treatments and yoga retreats. Tourists also highly prefer cultural experiences like local festivals and historical tours, adventure activities such as hiking and water sports, and food-related activities like cooking classes and wine tastings. There is a significant trend towards sustainable and environmentally friendly tourism activities. These results underscore the need to cater to diverse tourist interests in developing future tourism offerings.Practical implicationsDeveloping innovative events, using data-driven marketing strategies, involving local communities, and catering to diverse preferences can enhance the sustainability and competitiveness of the tourism sector.Social implicationsUnderstanding tourists' tendencies towards cultural, adventurous and sustainable experiences helps tourism operators and managers to create offers that satisfy tourists while promoting environmentally friendly practices. This shift promotes cultural preservation, environmental protection and community involvement.Originality/valueThis study uniquely analyzes top-rated TripAdvisor activities to identify key trends in tourist preferences, highlighting the growing demand for cultural, adventurous, gastronomic, and sustainable tourism.

Feeding pigs with hazelnut skin and addition of a concentrated phenolic extract from olive-milling wastewaters during pork processing: Effects on salami quality traits and acceptance by the consumers

Two groups of ten barrows received a conventional- (CTRL) or an experimental- (HZL) finishing diet containing 11% of hazelnut skin. From each barrow, two types of salami (namely, NITR, and PHEN) were obtained. NITR salami was added with E250 and E252. The latter were replaced by a phenolic concentrated extract from olive-milling wastewaters in PHEN salami. Salami fatty acids (FA), antioxidant capacity, lipid and color stability during refrigerated storage were assessed. A consumer test was also performed.Feeding strategy minimally affected the investigated parameters. PHEN salami had lower TBARS than NITR salami (P-value <0.001) during refrigerated storage despite comparable antioxidant capacity and similar PUFA content. Moreover, within CTRL group, lipid oxidation was lower in PHEN than NITR salami (P-value = 0.040).At the blind taste, dietary treatment did not affect salami sensorial properties nor consumer acceptance, whereas NITR salami showed better color (P-value = 0.036). Interestingly, HZL and PHEN salami showed improved sensorial properties and consumer acceptance after that consumers received information on salami origin.

Sounds too feminine? Blind tastings, phonetic gender scores, and the impact on professional critics

AbstractWe shed light on assessing product quality in blind tastings and their potential (gender) biases. We study how phonetic traits of grape varieties suggest product attributes in the context of professional reviews. This study aims to close this research gap and analyze how product variety and phonetic name traits affect expert ratings. We obtained data on 18,609 wines and their ratings from Wine Enthusiast Magazine between 1997 and 2016, yielding a sample of 31,058 observations. We suppose that the gender of the taster needs to be considered to understand what affects tastings and ratings, as women and men might be attracted differently to masculine or feminine names. This study shows that masculine names receive higher evaluations than feminine ones. This phonetic gender gap is driven by lower ratings for white wines by female reviewers and lower ratings for red wines by male reviewers. In addition, white wines are rated lower overall by both men and women.

Tastings at Tea Time: The Princeton Wine Group

AbstractThis is the story of the Princeton Wine Group, a group whose membership has been relatively constant for almost 40 years. This group has enjoyed 244 blind tastings involving 1,708 different wines. A statistical analysis was performed at each tasting examining whether participants ranked the quality of wines similarly and whether the preferences of the group were correlated with several variables including professional wine ratings and the prices of the wine. The article concludes with a discussion of lessons learned from a lifetime of wine tastings.

Causal Artificial Intelligence Models of Food Quality Data.

Causal Artificial Intelligence Models of Food Quality Data.

МИФОПОЭТИКА ВИНА КАК ИМАГИНАТИВНЫЙ АБСОЛЮТ ЧЕЛОВЕЧЕСКОГО БЫТИЯ

the article introduces a new concept at the intersection of philosophy, aesthetics, literary criticism, history, oenology and branding: mythopoetics. Mythopoetics of wine is understood as a special method of wine analytics that takes the perception of wine beyond the narrow classification of color, bouquet and taste with elements of terroir into the area of image formation: the harmony of historical fact, myth, terroir, poetry, symbol, which are quintessed in a certain wine brand. The article is a continuation of the efforts of José Ortega y Gasset, Massimo Dona, Eric Asimov, Rauf and Alexei Akchurinov in creating an approach to the philosophical understanding of wine. Wine is defined as an essential element of human intellectual and emotional life, firmly embedded in religious practices, secular culture and various genres of art. An important fact is the strong incorporation of wine into the economic structure, especially in the great wine regions of France, Italy, Spain, and Germany: from wine tastings and wine tours to the formation of a solid segment of the alcohol market in the wholesale and retail trade networks. Mythopoetics of wine allows creating its legendarium, project myths about life and death, beauty and ugliness, harmony and chaos onto a specific brand of wine, form the image of a particular wine producer, enhancing the tasting value of wine, increasing interest in thecourtliness of drinking wine, stimulating the tourist development of various regions, bringing the topic of wine to the level of the most pressing problems for interdisciplinary research, both in the field of fundamental knowledge and at the level of applied results.

Tell us how you taste wine, and we will tell you what kind of expert you are!

Whether “gurus”, “emperor” or “influencers”, wine consumers need references to help them choosing and buying wines. Given the diversity of possible sources (reviews from wine guides, wine merchants'recommendations or back wine label), where should they turn? Are all wine experts consensual in the way they taste wines? Do they differ depending on their domain of expertise: wine makers, sellers, or critics? This study aimed at understanding how experts apprehend wine tasting in relation to their professional objectives. A mixed design strategy combining content analysis of personal narratives of renowned wine experts with semi-structured interviews of wine professionals was used. Results confirmed that wine experts shared a common way of tasting wines, although their objectives and the way they report their wine tasting experiences differ according to their professional activities. Makers transcribe their perceptions by a list of sensory and technical-based terms focused on the absence or presence of wine defects to assess technical acceptability, Sellers are storytellers generating appeal and pleasure for consumers, and Critics write positive and metaphoric reviews to better highlight the best samples they taste. This raises new questions for the industry about the way in which wines are tasted, a routine practice that is internationally followed by wine professionals, but which may need to be renewed. Combining different data sources appeared to be a promising way to gain in-depth information in exploratory research.

ANTHROPOGENIC RESOURCES - OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF WINE TOURISM IN OLTENIA

The paper presents some viticultural centers in Oltenia, where viticulture, once well-represented, has seen a decline in terms of cultivated areas and interest in using grape production through winemaking (e.g., Brabova, Brădești, Plenița). The paper aimed to highlight the history of the place, the evolution of vineyards in the area, as well as recent activities focused on the capitalization of the economic potential of the localities that are the viticultural centers. With the launch of the Wine Route concept, tourist interest in wine-producing and historical areas has increased, especially since wine tourism offers interesting experiences through wine tastings, gastronomic dishes, and the beauty of the places. For this reason, the long-term tourism development of the Oltenia region should also consider oenotourism resources, which ensure the diversification of the local economy and the creation of new job opportunities for the community, with an impact on improving the quality of life for residents.

Sniffing Like a Wine Taster: Multiple Overlapping Sniffs (MOSS) Strategy Enhances Electronic Nose Odor Recognition Capability.

As highly promising devices for odor recognition, current electronic noses are still not comparable to human olfaction due to the significant disparity in the number of gas sensors versus human olfactory receptors. Inspired by the sniffing skills of wine tasters to achieve better odor perception, a multiple overlapping sniffs (MOSS) strategy is proposed in this study. The MOSS strategy involves rapid and continuous inhalation of odorants to stimulate the sensor array to generate feature-rich temporal signals. Computational fluid dynamics simulations are performed to reveal the mechanism of complex dynamic flows affecting transient responses. The proposed strategy shows over 95% accuracy in the recognition experiments of three gaseous alkanes and six liquors. Results demonstrate that the MOSS strategy can accurately and easily recognize odors with a limited sensor number. The proposed strategy has potential applications in various odor recognition scenarios, such as medical diagnosis, food quality assessment, and environmentalsurveillance.