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W i n e s & V i n e s M AY 2 0 1 4 75 Every wine was rated high quality, and every wine was rated low quality by different consumers on the panel. The expert panel included 28 wine experts who were asked to rate how they liked the wines on a nine-point scale from dislike extremely to like extremely. There was more agreement among the experts in terms of liking than among the consumers. The experts' quality ratings also correlated similarly with the State Fair judges' scores. Comparing descriptive analysis of the wines with quality ratings, the gold medal wines tended to be more balanced in the middle in terms of descriptive charac- ters present. Heymann said that while the descriptive panel tells about the wine product, con- sumers make choices in less controlled ways. When the same wines are given to experts and competition judges, the results are fairly similar between those two groups. She added, "The descriptive panel terms help explain what experts are looking at for their preference and quality evalua- tion, but not what the con- sumers are looking at." She noted that quality evaluations by the experts were able to identify attributes associated with high and low quality. However, the study indicates that consumer preference was all over the map and not con- sistent enough to provide descriptive correlations with wine quality. Experts vs. consumers In the post-talk Q&A, RAVE attendee and wine industry consultant Tom Selfridge asked, "Would you say this suggests that a consumer should not go to a wine expert if they want to find a wine they personally like?" Hey- mann answered, "Absolutely." Heymann commented on issues faced by consumers who do not have significant wine knowledge and don't often buy wine. "I often hear people say, 'I don't buy wine because I don't want to make a mistake,'" Heymann said. She observed that everyone makes decisions about how they dress every day, and the cost of clothing is usually more than the cost of a bottle of wine that someone may take to a dinner with friends. Consumers are comfortable making decisions about how they appear to the world every day, but with a bottle of wine they get tied up in fears about how their choice may be perceived. "That's a prob- lem created by the wine industry," Heymann said. Regional character and chemistry Heymann also discussed pre- liminary results of a chemical analysis of wines from a regional perspective using microwave plasma atomic emission spectroscopy to do volatile and non-volatile anal- yses and elemental analyses. The elements evaluated in relation to regional wine dif- ferences were calcium, potas- sium, sodium, magnesium, aluminum, strontium, barium and rubidium. The initial results indicate there are ele- mental differences in the wines evaluated that are more region-related than wine- or variety-related. This suggests it may be possible to do regional identification of wines based on elemental analyses. "People, Product, Profit Without top people, you cannot do much with the others." - Malcolm Forbes Discover the Difference of Our Specialized Services: It's Our Niche It's Our Network It's Our Approach It's Our Guarantee! WWW.RECRUITINGASSOCIATESNETWORK.COM Tel: 707-931-4707 822 College Avenue, Ste. B, Santa Rosa, CA 95404 Custom made - Handcrafted Barrels Contact: Yannick Rousseau Tel: (707) 332 4524 • Fax: (707) 224 8734 Email: yannickrousseau@sbcglobal.net Website: www.tonnellerie-de-jarnac-16.com Handcrafted & Authentic TonnellerieDeJarnac_Dir10 11/11/09 3:40 PM Page 1 Consumers get tied up in fears about how their choice of wine may be perceived. S A L E S & M A R K E T I N G