Astringency is often difficult to evaluate accurately in wine because of its complexity. This accuracy can improve through training sessions, but it can be time-consuming and expensive. A way to reduce these costs can be the use of wine experts, who are known to be reliable evaluators. Therefore, the aim of this work was to compare the sensory results and the panel performance obtained using trained panelists versus wine experts (winemakers). Judges evaluated twelve red wines for in-mouth basic perception (sweet, sour, bitter, astringent, and burning sensation) following the same tasting protocol and with the samples being presented in two different tasting modalities. Panels' performance and relationship between the chemical composition and the sensory perception were investigated. Both panels showed similar consistency and repeatability, and they were able to accurately measure the astringency of the wines. However, the significant correlations between sensory scores and chemical composition varied with the panel and the tasting modality. From our results, we could see that winemakers tended to discriminate better between the samples when the differences were very small.
Keywords: astringency; comparison; red wine; trained panel; winemakers.