Polarized projective mapping as a rapid sensory analysis method applied to South African Chenin Blanc wines

To test the applicability of Polarized Projective Mapping (PPM) to dry South African Chenin Blanc wines, one Projective Mapping (PM) and four PPM experiments were performed using expert judges. PM was used to create an initial product map for comparison with PPM results and to assist in the selection of the three poles. For the purposes of method validation 17 wines were analysed in this set of experiments. As the use of poles as stable references between evaluations allowed, the PPM results from all four PPM experiments were combined in a single statistical analysis. This gave a single figure which compared samples from all evaluations in a “Global MFA”. In this experiment repetitions, blind duplicates, explained variance, confidence ellipses, and grouping trends were used to establish the consistency of the results. All of these parameters indicated good reliability of the results. PPM consistently separated wooded and unwooded wines with acceptable percentage of explained variance and correct groupings of blind duplicates. The overall groupings were also consistent with those found in PM.