The role of olfaction in the elaboration and use of the Chardonnay wine concept

The existence of a Chardonnay wine concept was explored in two experiments. In the first experiment, 28 Chardonnay wine experts assessed in terms of a score the degree of representativeness of 48 white wines according to their own Chardonnay wine concept. The samples were 29 wines made from Chardonnay grapes and 19 wines made from other grape varieties (Aligoté, Melon de Bourgogne, Sylvaner, Sauvignon blanc, Chenin, Marsanne and Pinot blanc). Two assessment conditions were conducted: orthonasal and global (orthonasal plus retronasal and mouthfeel perceptions). Globally, scores were higher for Chardonnay wines than for non-Chardonnay ones and the consensus among experts demonstrated the existence of a shared Chardonnay wine sensory concept. The global evaluation led to a better discrimination between Chardonnay and non-Chardonnay wines, indicating that the sensory concept includes olfactive as well as taste and mouthfeel sensations. In the second experiment, the perceptive similarities of a subset of 18 wines (nine among the less representative and nine among the most representative) were studied. Twenty consumers freely sorted the wines according to odour similarity. Results were analysed by means of multidimensional scaling. Except for an extreme wine exhibiting very low representativeness, no clear separation of wines according to a Chardonnay wine concept was observed on the MDS space. However, a regression analysis showed significant correlations between representativeness scores and the first and third dimensions of the MDS space. This suggests that the Chardonnay wine concept is an experts' construct, elaborated by specific weighing of sensory features, partially based on perceptive similarities.