Sensory profile of pink port wines: Development of a flavour lexicon Bebiana Monteiro, a Alice Vilela a * and Elisete Correia b ABSTRACT: Port wine is a Portuguese fortified wine produced exclusively in the Douro Valley. Under the guidelines of the European Union Protected Designation of Origin, only products from Portugal may be labelled as Port or Porto. Pink port was first released in 2008, so it is a very recent variation in the market. Sensory evaluation has been widely applied in different fields in the wine industry, especially for testing quality, for product design and marketing. Herein, we evaluated the applicability of sensory techniques in the pink port wine industry, in order to assist winery operations in characterizing pink port wine sensory properties. To achieve these goals, our study was divided into several steps: the selection and training of panellists by using triangle and ranking tests, the identification and selection of descriptors and, finally, establishing a sensory profile with non-parametric multivariate analytical techniques such as categorical principal components analysis and multivariate analysis of variance, of several pink port brands. From the brands studied we conclude that three of them are very similar in terms of attributes, while the other two have different organoleptic characteristics. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Keywords: pink port wine descriptors; sensory evaluation; panellist selection and training; CATPCA analysis; non-parametric MANOVA Introduction Port wine is named after the city of Oporto located at the mouth of the River Douro in Portugal, facing west out into the Atlantic Ocean. [1] Although port wine is famously associated with the wine lodges in Oporto, it is produced from grapes grown and processed in the Demarcated Douro Region (DDR). The wine produced is fortified by the addition of a neutral grape spirit known as aguardente, which helps stop the fermentation leaving residual sugar in the wine, as well as to increase the alcohol content. Before being bottled, it is stored and aged in wood anywhere from 2 years to many decades, often in barrels stored in a cellar at low temperatures and a high degree of humidity. [2] The wine received its name, ‘port’ , in the latter half of the 17th century from the seaport city of Oporto at the mouth of the Douro River, as mentioned above, where much of the product was brought to market or for export to other countries in Europe. [3] The Douro valley, where port wine is produced, was defined and established as a protected region, or appellation, in 1756, making it the oldest defined and protected wine region in the world, the Demarcated Douro Region. Among European wines, port wine deserves special attention because of its history, its well-established international market presence and its major contributions to the local economy. Pink port is a very recent variation in the market, first released in 2008 by Croft, part of the Taylor Fladgate Partnership. Croft came up with pink port as a way to introduce the delights of port wine to a younger market. The result is a commonly described light and fresh style of port that is very fruity and enjoyable, chilled on its own or mixed in a wide variety of cocktails. The marketing of pink has encouraged bartenders around the world to devise a number of cocktail recipes specifically for pink port. [4] To make a pink port, Croft had to pioneer a new process involving techniques from both red and white port production. It is technically a ruby port, but fermented in a similar manner to a rosé wine, with limited exposure to the grape skins, thus cre- ating the rosé colour. Using a slow fermentation process, 7 days or twice as long as normal and then adding some colour from the pressed grape skins, Croft was able to produce a fresh and crisp port full of fine berry flavours. [4] Sensory descriptive analysis or sensory profiling combined with univariate or multivariate statistical analysis has been used to describe different wines from different grape varieties and dif- ferent origins: Bordeaux red wines; [5] Cabernet Sauvignon wines [6] and Zinfandel wines [7] from California; white wines from Penedés; [8] Riesling wines [9] Bordeaux-style red wines [10] from Canada; dry red wines from Greece [11] and young red wines from Rioja Alavesa. [12] Information about the sensory characteristics of the wines is critical for the successful development and market- ing of new wines. This type of information has been convention- ally obtained using descriptive sensory analysis by trained panels. [13] This methodology is commonly carried out with trained assessors, in three phases: descriptor generation, asses- sor training and evaluation of samples. [14] As one of the most fre- quent methodologies used in sensory science, descriptive sensory analysis provides meticulous, precise and consistent results. [15] Although wines from the DDR have a long history and several scientific physico-chemical studies have been carried out in the * Correspondence to: Alice Vilela, Institute for Biotechnology and Bioengineer- ing, Centre of Genomics and Biotechnology, (IBB/CGB-UTAD), 5001 801 Vila Real, Portugal. E-mail: avimoura@utad.pt a Institute for Biotechnology and Bioengineering, Centre of Genomics and Biotechnology, (IBB/CGB-UTAD), 5001 801 Vila Real, Portugal b CM-UTAD and Department of Mathematics, UTAD, 5001 801 Vila Real, Portugal Flavour Fragr. J. 2014, 29, 50–58 Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Research Article Received: 2 October 2012, Revised: 12 June 2013, Accepted: 14 June 2013 Published online in Wiley Online Library: 25 July 2013 (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI 10.1002/ffj.3178 50