Relationship among sensory descriptors, consumer preference and color parameters of Italian Novello red wines

The understanding of consumers expectation and the evolution that drive wine liking is critical for winemakers. In this view, the relationship between instrumental analysis and sensory attributes is useful to characterize products and map out the consumer preferences as a function of product descriptors. In this study 15 Italian Novello red wines were analyzed by HPLC and spectrophotometry for their color components (total color, copigmentation, polymeric pigments, anthocyanin) and evaluated by a panel of experts for their conformance to style. Moreover, the preference score of 300 consumers in different age and gender were related to instrumental and sensory data by external preference mapping (PREFMAP). Spectrophotometric measurements of color analyzed using principal component analysis (PCA) showed that color components of wines cover a wide range of values. That is prevalently due to grape variety used and to a secondary extent to different winemaking practices and environmental conditions. The relationship between segmentation of consumers liking and expert evaluation of wine color are critically discussed. The 15 wines resulted to be different in terms of instrumental color parameters and, with regards to sensory attributes, sometimes not fully matching the Novello style in terms of color and olfactory characteristics. Consumers color preference obtained in independent tasting sessions showed that high colored wines were associated with high quality ratings.