Exploring the nature of wine expertise: cognitive processing in expert and novice wine judges

Abstract

The mental processes that enable a wine connoisseur to identify a favourite vintage have received little systematic study. Four experiments explored wine expertise by comparing the behaviour of wine experts and wine novices as they performed tasks that are relevant to evaluation of wine aroma via orthonasal olfaction. Expertise was defined in terms of a wine judge's verbal (semantic) and olfactory experience with wine-relevant stimuli (see Melcher & Schooler, 1996). The first two studies investigated cognitive processes that were expected t o facilitate olfactory performance of experts, namely episodic memory and verbal (semantic) memory. In the first two experiments, wine experts and wine novices participated in tasks aimed at investigating olfactory threshold, odour memory, odour identification ability, and consistency of naming wine-relevant odorants. Expert wine judges demonstrated superior olfactory recognition despite having similar olfactory sensitivities, bias measures and verbal skills (naming abilities) to the novice judges. The final two studies investigated perceptual bias in judgments of wine aroma. Perceptual bias is a cognitive construct concerned with the influence of knowledge on perceptual processing. Perceptual bias was assumed more likely to occur in wine experts, leading them astray, rather than facilitating their aroma judging performance. More specifically, Experiments 3 and 4 investigated the phenomenon of colour-induced olfactory bias in wine experts (Experiment 3) and in social drinkers (Experiment 4). The task that was employed simulated a wine-evaluation situation where colour and aroma were open to evaluation by visual and olfactory senses. Experts were able to discriminate white wines that had been spiked with colour to simulate (a) an aged white wine and (b) a red wine, although they did succumb to a degree of colour-induced olfactory bias. That is, experts' aroma judgments to the white wine that was coloured red were more accurate when the wine was presented in opaque (black) glasses than when presented in clear glasses. Social drinkers (novices) found the task extremely difficult, demonstrating indiscriminate behaviour in some conditions. The four studies taken together suggest that experts do indeed differ cognitively from wine novices in their approach to evaluating wine aroma. Experts have superior ability to recognise wine-relevant odours in the absence of superior verbal (odour naming) skills. Experts were also able to discriminate wines that were artificially coloured, particularly when the wine samples were presented in opaque glasses, whereas social drinkers were relatively indiscriminate. None-the-Iess, the experts' advantage was somewhat compromised by perceptual bias; the colour red was able to seduce wine experts, degrading their performance relative to that when the wine colour could not be a factor (i.e., a visual cue) to aid their judgment. Theoretical and applied implications are discussed.