Wine’s preferences based on intrinsic attributes: a sensorial wine tasting experiment

The complexity of the wine market has constrained researchers to try different methods to define how consumers choose wines; various approaches have been adopted in modelling wine consumers purchase behaviour. Within the behaviourally-oriented analysis of consumer food choice, several broad approaches can be distinguished: the economics of information approach; the multi-attribute approach; the hierarchical approaches; the integrative approaches. In the multi-attribute approaches quality is a multidimensional phenomenon described by a set of characteristics ascribable to the intrinsic and extrinsic product attributes (Olson and Jacoby, 1972). The wine choice depends of the information that consumers can get from intrinsic attributes and from extrinsic attributes (Charters and Pettigrew, 2003). Price, brand, region of origin, grapes and gained awards are the key extrinsic attributes used by different consumer groups when choosing wine (Combris et al., 1997; Batt and Dean, 2000; Oczkowski, 2001; Lockshin et al., 2006; Martínez et al., 2006). Physical characteristics of the wine such as taste and flavour are intrinsic attributes and play an important role in wine quality perception of consumers (Grunert et al., 1996; Grunert 1997; Jover et al., 2004), considering that different consumption situations amplify or change the importance of different wine characteristics (Hall and Lockshin, 2000). This paper addresses the problem of measuring the intrinsic attributes that characterise the wine, based on specific characteristics and the impact on consumers in terms of preferences. To this end, in September 2016 it has been conducted a sensory evaluation experiment on twelve white wines, coming from six different grape varieties of the South Tyrol (Italy), by 33 judges. The wine tasting experiment was conducted by following a double-blind control procedure in which neither the subjects of the experiment nor the researchers know information that could introduce bias or otherwise skew the results (Rivers and Webber, 1907). The judges were conscious consumers of wine but they were not sommelier or connected to the wine industry. They were all selected on the basis of interest and availability as well as their experience in wine topic. The characteristics considered in the sensory evaluation experiment are referred to intrinsic attributes of appearance, nose and palate. The judges were been first trained during a previous sessions to familiarise them with the terms of the characteristics considered and with scales used. Each judge had tasted only a set of four white wines, coming from different grapes, in accordance with a fractional experiment. In our case, the fractional or partial profile experiment concerns the sampling of the wine attribute levels (wine brand and grape varieties) in order to define possible sets of wine for tasting. This is a case in which possible choices rather than choosers are sampled (Manski and Lerman, 1977). In the session of taste, the judges tasted 6 mL of the wine at service temperature; for each tasted wine, the judges have expressed a preferential judgment on intrinsic attributes. The preferential judgments was collected by means of an anonymous paper questionnaire, generating a set of data, including consumer characteristics, demographic and wine choice-related variables. Conjoint analysis method is performed on intrinsic attributes of the wine in order to understand the judges’ choice (Green and Rao, 1971; Green and Srinivasan, 1978; Gil and Sánchez, 1997); more specifically, objective of this analysis is to clarify the influence of tasting (without any other information on the tasted wines) on judge preferences. The results show how the perception of the intrinsic attributes drives the wine choice process.