A METHODOLOGY FOR THE ANALYSIS OF SENSORY TYPICALITY JUDGMENTS.

The present paper described a global methodology studying typicality, in several steps (the first step conditioning the following ones), (1) to ensure the existence of an agreement in typicality judgments between the local wine experts; (2) to link typicality with the appellation membership; (3) to determine the relation between typicality and the global image of the product space; and finally, (4) to characterize the specificity of the wines judged as the most representative. This methodology was applied to two different sets of appellations (white wines and red wines sets) from the Central Loire Valley region in France. The results obtained differed according to the product space studied: an agreement between the typicality judgments was only observed for the red wines product space. The appellation and typicality constituted strong elements in the red wine space structure and it was possible to translate typicality of the red wines product space in terms of sensory characteristics. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS Evaluating the sensory specificities of wines from a given category, such as an appellation, is of strategic interest for the wine industry. The production factors induce a great sensory diversity within the appellations, which leads to a problem of representativeness: the appellation membership is thus not sufficient to determine the sensory specificities of a given appellation and has to be distinguished from typicality. For a full vision, typicality needs to be studied through typicality judgments, global image of the product space and characterization. This paper proposes a global methodology for both the data collection and data treatment, including analysis of variance models, linking and synthesis methods. The example suggests that the existence of sensory typicality needs to be checked in all wine appellations where typicality is considered as a quality criterion. It would be thereafter possible to study sensory typicality and to translate it in terms of sensory characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]