Uncorking the wine taster's emotional experience: methods and contributing factors, a review

In recent years, sensory analysis research has focused on measuring emotional responses during wine tasting, acknowledging that the wine taster's experience extends beyond sensory perception and hedonic evaluation. This literature review first presented the methodological tools used to assess the emotions evoked during wine tasting, distinguishing between explicit and implicit measures, and discussed their respective limitations. Thus, this review examined existing wine-specific emotional lexicons and the emerging field of automatic emotion measurement applied to wine tasting. Second, it explored key findings regarding the emotions elicited by wine tasting, emphasizing the influence of both extrinsic (e.g., context, expectations) and intrinsic (e.g., sensory properties) factors. The analysis highlighted that while wine can indeed evoke emotions, research on automatic emotional responses in this context remains in its early stages. Moreover, studies using declarative approaches revealed significant challenges in employing emotional descriptors for wine characterization. Notably, in studies conducted to date, the characterization of emotions elicited by wines appears to be used primarily as a tool for describing wines rather than for characterizing the taster, a perspective that was discussed in this review.