Drinking through rosé-coloured glasses: Influence of wine colour on the perception of aroma and flavour in wine experts and novices

Wine colour carries a myriad of meanings regarding the provenance and expected sensory qualities of a wine. That meaning is presumably learnt through association, and part of a wine taster's skill comes from being able to decode information that can be discerned in subtle variations in the colour of the wine that they drink/evaluate. However, reliance on colour means that wine tasters, especially experts, often exhibit colour-induced olfactory biases. The present study assesses how wine colour – specifically the pink hue of rosé wines – can influence both the perceived aroma and flavour in a large sample of wine novices and experts. Participants (N = 168) tasted three wines – a white wine (W), a rosé wine (R), and the white wine dyed to match the rosé (Ŕ) – and freely selected three aroma and three flavour descriptors from a list. They also rated wine liking, flavour intensity, and description difficulty for each wine. Linguistic analysis demonstrated that those with wine tasting experience judged Ŕ to be much more similar to R than to W, even though Ŕ and W were the same. Moreover, red fruit descriptors were attributed to both R and Ŕ, especially in terms of flavour. Quantitative ratings revealed that Ŕ was liked less than W or R, and participants found it more difficult to describe Ŕ than R. These results demonstrate that while participants found the dyed rosé somehow different from the undyed wines, they nevertheless used the red fruit terms to describe its aroma and flavour. The implications of such results in terms of cognitive representations of wine and the role of sensory expectations are discussed