From wine styles to complexity: decoding the multisensory perception of wine through sensory diversity

Abstract

Wine is one of the most complex food sensory systems. Considerable progress has been made in identifying wine flavor compounds and understanding their role and behavior (1), but the mechanisms through which chemical composition is translated into wine perception, wine styles and sensory complexity remain only partially understood.

Most studies investigating sensory interactions in wine have traditionally adopted a top-down approach, focusing on the effects of specific compounds or simplified mixtures on selected sensory attributes. The approach presented here explores wine diversity itself as an experimental model to investigate how multisensory perception is structured in real wines. By combining sensory analysis with chemical and compositional data across diverse wines, stable perceptual configurations emerge from recurring patterns of co-presence and systematic absence among sensory dimensions. These configurations suggest that wine styles are not defined by descriptors, but by organized multisensory structures resulting from interactions among aroma, taste and mouthfeel stimuli.

Studies conducted on both white and red wines indicate that sensory diversity can reveal higher-order perceptual organizations linked to wine identity, style differentiation and complexity (2-5). Cross-modal interactions between olfactory and oral sensations appear to play a key role in shaping these perceptual structures. Recent investigations on new potential flavor compounds in wine (6) further suggest that some dimensions of wine complexity may arise from system-level perceptual effects that cannot be fully explained by individual sensory descriptors alone.

Overall, it will be discussed how a bottom-up exploration of wine sensory diversity may contribute to bridging molecular interaction studies with the emergence of perceptual meaning, wine styles and sensory complexity.

References

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3. Piombino, P. et al. (2025), Studying how dry extract can affect the aroma release and perception in different red wine styles. J Sci Food Agric, 105: 901-912. https://doi.org/10.1002/jsfa.13882

4. Piombino, P. et al. (2020), Preliminary sensory characterisation of the diverse astringency of single cultivar Italian red wines and correlation of sub-qualities with chemical composition. Australian Journal of Grape and Wine Research, 26: 233-246. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajgw.12431

5. Pittari, E. et al. (2020). Exploring Olfactory–Oral Cross-Modal Interactions through Sensory and Chemical Characteristics of Italian Red Wines. Foods, 9, 1530. https://doi.org/10.3390/foods9111530

6. Perenzoni et al. (2024). Exploring Putative Kokumi Oligopeptides in Classic Sparkling Wines with a UHPLC-ESI-MS/MS Targeted Protocol. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 72(47), 26189-26208. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jafc.4c08213

Acknowledgements

Part of the research presented was supported by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MIUR) through the PRIN projects D-Wines and/or supported by national and international collaborations.