Reducing alcohol levels in wine

August 3, 2009 It must be noted that high quality wines currently on the market generally contain increasingly high levels of alcohol, in contradiction with public health and road safety messages. Improvements in viticulture and climate change are, in part, the causes of this increase over the last 20 years.

It is in this framework that the project VDQA (Vins de Qualité à teneur réduite en Alcool – reduced alcohol quality wines) was launched in 2006. Funded by France’s national research funding agency, ANR, this Vitagora accredited project brings together 11 public and private sector partners. It has a three-way aim: optimize technologies for alcohol reduction, study the potential target market of these new products and, finally, evaluate the impact of alcohol reduction on the sensory perception of wines and their consumer acceptability. This project, coordinated by Jean-Louis Escudier (INRA Narbonne), is now coming to the end of its extensive three year program.

Sophie Meillon is an engineering graduate from Poly’Tech Montpellier and with a Masters in Management of Sensory Properties of Food Products from her studies in Dijon. She has now nearly finished her doctoral thesis and hopes to carry on with post-doctoral studies, preferably overseas. “My research was funded by the Pernod Ricard research center and concerns the sensory aspect of VDQA. I carried out the research at the European Center for Sciences of Taste (CESG) in Dijon under the supervision of Pascal Schlich and Marc Danzart”, she explains.

Within her research, in which Christine Urbano, an engineer at the CESG, also participated, four varietals have been studied: Chardonnay, Sauvignon, Merlot and Syrah. These varietals have been supplied and de-alcoholized by the experimental unit of Pech’Rouge of INRA. The wines were treated by the process of reverse osmosis, a technology that is commonly used in the low-alcohol wine market.

“This research has allowed us in particular to show that the reduction in alcohol levels in wine is perceptible on average from a reduction of 3%. In red wines, it induces a reduction in the perception of warmth and bitterness, with an increase in astringency. In white wines, however, it induces a reduction in the perception of warmth, with an increase in bitterness or acidity. Finally, it also reduced the perception of “length” in both whites and reds,” Sophie Meillon explains.

This research has also shown that this information – that is the fact of knowing you are about taste a low alcohol wine – can have a negative effect on overall consumer perceptions of quality with, it must be noted, a stronger effect for red wines. “However, we have been able to show the existence of a segmentation of two groups, the first for whom the information has no negative impact or a significant positive impact, and the second who thinks that wine labeled as being alcohol reduced will have a poorer taste quality,” she indicates. “Now, we still have to understand why alcohol reduction is perceived negatively by consumers in order to find the best way of informing them about it.”

Contact
Sophie Meillon
Email: meillon@cesg.cnrs.fr

Source: Agence JFD and Co