Comments on: Do taste and smell adjectives signal value, or do they create it?

By: Chocolate Gourmet

Chocolate Gourmet — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 17:02:25 +0000

Huh?
Coffee does not taste like nuts and chocolate to me, and Sauvignon Blanc does not smells like grapefruit and cat pee.

By: Wine Taste

Wine Taste — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 02:08:47 +0000

[...] Blind Taste / Robin Goldstein» Blog Archive » Do taste and smell … [...]

By: Ryan Sager - Neuroworld - Smells Like… Bullshit - True/Slant

Ryan Sager - Neuroworld - Smells Like… Bullshit - True/Slant — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:36:30 +0000

[...] at Blind Taste, Robin Goldstein looks at the research on “smell adjectives” having to do with the chemical senses. We’re [...]

By: Bottle Of Wine Per Month

Bottle Of Wine Per Month — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:24:14 +0000

[...] Blind Taste / Robin Goldstein» Blog Archive » Do taste and smell … [...]

By: Wine Words « Cheap Talk

Wine Words « Cheap Talk — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:45:13 +0000

[...] 3, 2009 in Uncategorized | Tags: food and wine | by jeff Via Robin Goldstein, the work of Coco Krumme who analyzed wine reviews and classified words according to whether they [...]

By: Jose C.

Jose C. — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:10:12 +0000

Another big factor, in the end, is the market. Try high pricing a wine with little complexity, aroma, and with little oak contact, and you will find that it will sink in price despite marketing. The US market is reasonably good to correct for “overpriced wine” in the price range of $5 – $40. Even for French or Napa wines. The American consumer is becoming more sophisticated.

By: Jennifer G.

Jennifer G. — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:45:18 +0000

You’re missing at least one segment of the wine industry that comes up with descriptors for certain wines: sensory panels.
I have worked on a sensory panel and we always tasted blind. We spent weeks determining our aroma, taste and mouthfeel descriptor list for each set of wines in every study. The work we did was quantitative.
We tasted wines that were short on descriptors because honestly, there wasn’t much there. We encountered some that were a more tannic, acidic Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill. We also found wines where the list of descriptors was long– as many as 15-20 because of their complexity (and admittedly because everyone’s sensory perceptions are different).
Would I have paid more for one of these wines because of its complexity? Absolutely.
The descriptive words are more than just words. A long list of descriptors with words like chocolate, vanilla, leather etc. indicate a wine has been aged, which increases its production costs and thus it’s market price. Grapes that are dry grown vs. those that are irrigated will often produce a richer, fuller juice– and dry grown grapes often command a higher price because the tonnage is lower. Obviously, there are many other factors related specifically to production that will affect the sensory qualities and price of a wine.
Granted, sensory analysis is different from the marketing done on wine labels and the reviews written by critics, but sensory panels help guide the descriptive properties of wines without making judgments on the actual quality of the wine and with no knowledge of the price.
I would say your third theory is probably the closest to reality — a sensory panel has come up with a quantitative list of descriptors that is edited by marketing departments or editors to pick the most favorable aromas and flavors, and then they add the qualitative descriptors like “elegant”, “old” and “pleasing”.