Dynamic characterization of red wine astringency: Case study with Uruguayan Tannat wines

Astringency is one of the most important sensory characteristics of red wine. It involves several mouth-feel sensations, which have been commonly used to describe red wines. However, the dynamics of astringency sensations have not been previously studied. In this context, the aim of the present work was to obtain a dynamic description of the astringency of red wines. Seven commercial Uruguayan Tannat wines were evaluated in triplicate by a panel of 9 trained assessors. They were asked to describe the astringency of the wines during 40 s in a Temporal Dominance of Sensations (TDS) task comprising a list of 8 terms: 'dry', 'fine emery', 'harsh', 'mouthcoating', 'puckery', 'rough', 'silky', and 'velvety'. After completing the TDS task they were asked to rate global astringency intensity using an unstructured scale. The wines significantly differed in their average global astringency intensity. Between two and three terms were significantly dominant to describe the astringency of each of the seven wines and enabled to discriminate samples with different astringency characteristics. Samples differed in the dominance of the terms and the time elapsed until they became dominant. Wines which did not significantly differ in their average astringency rating showed different dynamic astringency profiles, which evidenced that the dynamics of astringency characteristics were not related to global astringency intensity. TDS seems to be an interesting methodological choice to characterize the dynamics of wine astringency and opens new possibilities to better understand this complex sensory characteristic. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.