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Chem. Senses 27: 747-755, 2002
© Oxford University Press 2002

Demystifying Wine Expertise: Olfactory Threshold, Perceptual Skill and Semantic Memory in Expert and Novice Wine Judges

Wendy V. Parr1, David Heatherbell1 and K. Geoffrey White2

1 Centre for Viticulture & Oenology, Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand 2 Department of Psychology, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

Correspondence to be sent to: Wendy V. Parr, Animal & Food Sciences Division, Lincoln University, PO Box 84, Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand. e-mail: parrw1{at}lincoln.ac.nz

We investigated recognition and identification of wine-relevant odours as a function of domain-specific expertise. Eleven wine experts and 11 wine novices participated in tasks measuring olfactory threshold, odour recognition, odour identification, and consistency of odour naming. Twenty-four wine-relevant odorants were sampled orthonasally by each participant in the semantic (identification; consistency of naming) and episodic (recognition) memory tasks. Results showed superior olfactory recognition by expert wine judges, despite their olfactory sensitivity and bias measures being similar to those of novices. Contrary to predictions based on reports of an association between odour memory and semantic processing, wine experts did not perform better than novices on the verbal memory tasks. Further, ability to recognize odours and ability to name odours were not positively correlated, although the novices' data showed a trend in this direction. The results imply that the source of superior odour recognition in wine experts was not enhanced semantic memory and linguistic capabilities for wine-relevant odours. One interpretation of the data is that wine experts were less susceptible than wine novices to verbal overshadowing. When forced to identify the odorants, experts' superior perceptual skills protected them from verbal interference, whereas novices' generated verbal representations of the odours were emphasized at the expense of the odorant itself. This has implications for training in wine-evaluation skills.


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