Consumer understanding and nutraceutical composition of red table wine blends

Increasing competition in the marketplace requires products meet the desires of consumers. Preference mapping techniques help understand drivers of liking, consumer preferences and segmentation. Within these methods, optimal or ideal areas may be identified. This provides information about how to best optimize the product attributes to create a successful product. Mixture designs may be used to optimize amounts of specific ingredients by understanding how level changes affect the entire formulation. The purpose of this research was to understand how to best optimize red wine blends created from a mixture design and analyzed in the mixture design environment. Consumer results showed definite segmentation within the testing population. One segment preferred wines with high proportions of Zinfandel and the other segment preferred wines with low amounts of Zinfandel and high amounts of Cabernet Sauvignon. High correlations between descriptive analysis and analytical measures showed definite relationships, particularly with depth of color and red color density. The 360-day storage period showed a decrease in anthocyanin content for all wines, an increase in polymeric color and an overall increase in total phenolics. The desirability function was modified in this research to determine consumer areas of acceptability in a more realistic manner. Instead of using mean values to determine acceptability, other values were substituted. Results indicated the need for segmentation prior to identifying optimal blends. Finally, preference mapping techniques were investigated and applied to the red wine data. Internally- and externally-derived maps illustrated the differences in data pretreatment and interpretation. Advanced methods were shown to provide additional information, including identification of an optimal product and optimal sensory profiles. Further work is necessary to understand ideal blends obtained through desirability function modification and how they best meet consumer needs.