How about some cheese with that wine? Use of Multi-Intake Temporal Dominance of Sensations to evaluate the influence of cheese on wine perception and appreciation

In the gastronomic sector, certain wine-cheese associations are recommended while others are discouraged. Nonetheless, there is no evidence from sensory studies for such “good” or “bad” combinations. The objectives of the present work were: (i) to evaluate wine perception and appreciation by multi-intake Temporal Dominance of Sensations (TDS) alternated with hedonic tests, (ii) to study how cheese intake before wine can change wine perception and appreciation. A panel of wine and cheese consumers evaluated four French wines: Pacherenc (white, sweet, Petit Manseng), Sancerre (white, dry, Sauvignon Blanc), Bourgogne (red, Pinot noir) and Madiran (red, Cabernet Sauvignon and Tannat). Consumers performed the TDS and rated their level of liking repeatedly for three consecutive sips. Further on, they did the same task, but after eating some cheese (Epoisses, Comté, Roquefort, Crottin de Chavignol) between sips. All cheeses were tasted with all wines over several sessions. TDS data were mainly analyzed in terms of dominance duration of attributes by Canonical Variate Analysis. Results showed that cheese consumption had an impact (p< 0.05) on dominance duration of attributes for all wines and on preference for most. For Madiran, preference decreased significantly among sips when drunk alone, but all cheeses increased its liking significantly and reduced dominance duration of astringency, bitterness and acidity. For Sancerre, all cheeses reduced the dominance duration of spicy and floral, but only Epoisses and Roquefort increased that of bitter. Although traditionally associated to Crottin de Chavignol, the highest hedonic scores for this wine were obtained after eating Comté. For Pacherenc, all cheeses reduced sweetness, floral and honey; preference was always high. For Bourgogne, duration was reduced for astringency and increased for aromas while liking increased. Therefore, present cheeses had either positive or no impact on wine per ception and appreciation, proving that some wines should rather be drunk with cheese than alone