EPISODE SHOW NOTES:

In episode 53 of The Wineitupanotch Podcast, Anshu Grover explains the term 'organoleptic’ in the context of wine' which refers to the sensory qualities of a substance, including taste, color, odor, and feel. We start by looking at an official definition of this term, and then consider its usage in wine evaluation, and its importance in different contexts such as wine fermentation, professional wine tasting, and regional classification systems.

This is another quick tip episode by The Wineitupanotch Podcast that’s sure to help you feel more confident in expressing yourself in wine-speak!

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

[Anshu Grover] 

Hello and welcome to The Wineitupanotch Podcast, a podcast where we talk about wine, life, and everything in between. My name is Anshu Grover, I am a certified specialist of wine and your host of this podcast, and I am so thrilled that you've decided to join me today. Thank you for doing so.

Welcome to episode 53 of The Wineitupanotch Podcast!

Today we are going to do a little quickie episode focused on a wine term that you will probably see or hear fairly frequently if you are quite entrenched in the world of wine, or you're learning more about the world of wine, and that is the word "organoleptic". Okay, organoleptic.

I'm going to start here with the Merriam Webster Dictionary definition of this word. According to Merriam Webster dictionary, organoleptic can be defined as being affecting or relating to qualities such as taste, color, odor, and feel of a substance - so any substance, a food or drug, or in our case, wine - that stimulates the sense organs. Okay. Or a secondary definition, according to Merriam Webster is - involving use of the sense organs.

It can be used as an adverb or an adjective, so you can say it as "organelliptically" or “organoleptic”.

And I love this word. I see it all the time, but I have to admit that at one point I did have to look it up because it wasn't abundantly obvious to me what it meant.

Now, I'm just going to break this down in more standard layperson terms.

Essentially what we're talking about are the qualities of a wine that are related to sense - so that would be anything from taste, the look, the texture, or the smell. Those are the primary organoleptic characteristics that we think about or we evaluate when we talk about wine.

The way in which you'll hear or see this term used is in the context often of wine evaluation. So you might see, hear, or read about people evaluating the organoleptic qualities of a wine, and in fact, evaluation of the organoleptic qualities is something that happens quite frequently in two instances…(acutally) I'll say three. 

One - as wine is being fermented, it is often drawn off and evaluated for things like texture, color, smell, and taste for winemakers to be able to determine if the wine is moving in the direction that they wanted to during the fermentation process.

Second - as a wine professional or a student of wine, when you are tasting and evaluating wines, you are evaluating their organoleptic qualities and often these qualities are used as a key determinant of the quality of a wine. 

Third - there are some regions in the world that have established processes that involve assessment of the organoleptic qualities of a wine before determining if they can be included, or will be included, within a specific quality level or denomination of origin, or an appellation if you will, in a given region.

Let me give you some examples of that.

Countries and regions that use organoleptic testing to determine if a wine meets the criteria of a given classification system include countries such as Italy. So for example, wines that are included in the DOCGs, which is the highest classification for Italian wines, are assessed by a panel before they are given permission to use the DOCG label and that panel is doing a rigorous assessment of organoleptic properties of the wine to ensure that they meet the standards that are expected of the region and the vintage. 

This is also done in Spain for the DOCa wines, and that only pertains to two regions, namely Rioja and Priorat. 

(It is) also done in France for AOC wines. So they don't officially name it organoleptic testing in France, but the system - the AOC system - does still employ a sensory evaluation and uses that to determine if wines meet the criteria of a given AOC. 

And one last example would be within Portugal. In Tawny Port, for example, there's a process that's used to determine the perceived age of the port and whether it matches what the wine producer would like to label the wine as.

In terms of how these organoleptic evaluations are performed, as I said before, there's usually a panel that's put together - very experienced wine tasters, wine makers, wine evaluators, and they are looking at things like sight, smell, taste and mouthfeel, and really assessing what is appearing in front of them against an established set of criteria.

There are standard protocols that are employed to ensure fairness in the process and to ensure that there's actually a standard that's being adhered to.

And that's a little bit about the word organoleptic. I hope that helps. The next time you see this word or hear it being used, hopefully you'll feel more confident in knowing how it applies to the world of wine and what it means.

And with that, I will wish you a wonderful day. Thank you once again for joining me on The Wineitupanotch Podcast.

And until next time, I wish you lots of peace, love, light, and of course, great wine. 

Cheers!