Judging wine quality: Do we need experts, consumers or trained panelists?

• Descriptive Analysis revealed quality drivers of wines entered in a wine competition.
• Hedonic liking and perceived quality correlated positively for experts and consumers.
• Liking and perceived quality of some consumers segments did not match with wine quality scores.
• Wine experts use a framework similar to Descriptive Analysis when evaluating liking and quality of red wines.

A Descriptive Analysis panel, wine experts and consumers evaluated 27 Californian Cabernet Sauvignon wines with varying quality scores. Descriptive Analysis revealed several aroma and flavor descriptors driving quality scores. For all consumer segments as well as the wine experts, hedonic liking was shown to highly correlate to perceived quality, but for some consumers liking and perceived quality was not at all correlated to the quality scores of the wines. Wine experts were able to find significant differences in liking and quality, but did not agree completely with the assigned quality scores from the wine judgment. Wine experts also used a combination of both descriptive and hedonic terms when describing a high quality wine, indicating that they are better at communicating and describing what they like.