Wine Flavours Card to match wine terms

A new ‘Wine Flavours Card’ that will help Chinese wine drinkers better understand Western wine terminology around tastes and aromas is nearing completion.

Wine Australia is working with a design company to create the bi-lingual tool, which builds on the findings of the detailed project Understanding Chinese sensory preferences for varied wine styles and the language used to describe them, carried out by researchers at the University of South Australia’s Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science.

In a simple format it matches Western terms into ‘tastes’ that are more recognisable to Chinese consumers; for example apple equates to dragon fruit and strawberry to yangmei. There is also a guide to the general descriptors Chinese consumers use more often, such as balanced, mellow and lingering.

The Wine Flavours Card will be available from August 2015 and will be distributed through Wine Australia’s China office, used in its Chinese education program and made available to Australian cellar doors that welcome Chinese visitors. For further information, contact Anne Duncan at anne.duncan@wineaustralia.com.

The Wine Australia-funded project was led by Dr Armando Corsi, together with Dr Justin Cohen and Prof Larry Lockshin. It is believed to be the first in the world designed specifically to understand how regular drinkers of imported wine in China actually describe what they taste.

‘The findings will allow us to help Australian wine businesses choose the most appropriate Chinese descriptors to match the sensory profile of their wines’, Dr Corsi said.

‘As an added bonus, we also now have a better understanding of the Australian wines styles the Chinese prefer and how much they are willing to pay’.

The project’s final report can be found here.