A matter of place: sensory and chemical characterisation of fine Australian Chardonnay and Shiraz wines of provenance

Abstract

Establishing a fine wine image through regional typicality has been of interest to New World wine producing countries like Australia, but previous research mainly involved unoaked experimental wines, which were not reflective of the retail wine market. The regional typicality of commercially available fine Australian wines (FAW) was therefore explored, based on the hypotheses that sensory and chemical composition of varietal fine wines would discriminate by region, and further nuances within region would be explained by drivers of intraregional typicality. Chardonnay wines (2015 vintage) from Margaret River (MR, n = 16) and Yarra Valley (YV, n = 16); and Shiraz wines (2014 vintage) from Barossa Valley (BV, n = 16) and McLaren Vale (MV = 15), were selected for descriptive sensory analysis and underwent profiling of volatiles by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC–MS). For both grape varieties, there was large variability in wine styles among wines from the same GI, such as fruity/crisp vs oaked Chardonnay and oaky/astringent vs savoury Shiraz. Consequently, human intervention seemed to be an important component of regional/sub-regional typicality, which therefore cannot be determined solely on geographic origin of the fruit. Using a combination of sensory markers and volatile profiles allowed the building of regional typicality models, which are promising, however, consumers may not perceive sub-regional differences based on sensory attributes. Undoubtedly, variation of wine styles emerging across wine regions, vintages, and viticultural and winemaking practices needs to be further explored, but this work created a preliminary sensory and volatile map for future research.