Aims: This study investigated whether age has an impact on perception and liking of white wine.Methods and results: Differences between two groups of 50plus consumers (each n=50, 50-65 and 65-80 years) and a group of young subjects (n=50, 25-40 years) regarding white wine perception and liking were investigated. Participants blindly rated the perceived sweetness, sourness, aroma intensity and overall liking of six different wines on an 11-point scale. Subjects also performed a taste and smell test. Finally, socio-demographic data and consumerism were collected. This study demonstrated that elderly people perceive sweetness, sourness and aroma intensity only slightly differently compared to younger subjects. The older groups gave slightly higher liking-marks, but results were not significantly different. Sensory attributes (sweet, sour, aroma) of the wines had most influence on liking.Conclusion: This study delivers no proof that age and/or gender explains liking as insulated factor. Generally it seems that sour products were liked less, whereas regularly consumed and sweeter products were preferred.Significance and impact of the study: As sensory properties of the wines, in combination with experience, contribute most to the overall liking of the product, it seems to be more successful economically for producers/outlets to provide wines rich in positively engaged attributes or possessing familiar flavour profiles to the consumers, irrespective of the socio-demographic group of the potential buyer. IntroductionCurrent global wine production is higher than wine consumption and the latter is expected to decrease further (OIV, 2010).The difference between over production and consumption is about to rise further if no corrective actions are taken. Such actions could be the reduction of vineyards, regulation of yields, targeting new consumer groups, or focusing on already existing consumers to boost sale quantities. Those consumer groups should be structurally attractive, high in number and possess buying power (Kotler and Bliemel, 2006; Michael, 2006). A potential group which fulfils all these demands are consumers in the 50plus age group 1. An estimated 62% of wines, 55% of sparkling wines and 52% of whiskey are already consumed by this age group in developed countries (Tréguer, 2002). To stress these estimations, an American study, which dealt with calorie intake of persons between 20 and 65plus years, showed that the elderly subgroup consumed more alcohol during the week, and only at weekends the youngest experimental group drank more (de Castro, 2002).However, the sensibility of the chemical senses decreases with age and nearly everybody is affected by the age of 70 (Forde and Delahunty, 2004; Mojet et al., 2001; Schiffman, 1992; Stroud, 2005), with smell being more affected than taste (Schiffman and Warwick, 1989). The decrease of sensibility depends very much on the person, which explains why test results of elderly vary greater in comparison to younger individuals (Koskinen et al., 2003b; Laureati et al., 2008; Stevens and Dadarwala, 1993), with results of threshold tests decreasing the most (Hummel et al., 2002). At the same time the general attractiveness of food does not seem to decrease with age (Mattes, 2002; Yoshinaka et al., 2007). However, there seems to be a relation between sensitivity of taste and smell and preferred foodstuff (Duffy et al., 1995), with alcohol being least affected (Mathey et al., 2001; Mattes, 2002).At this point a possible impact of learning effects should be considered as well, for example “mere exposure”. This phenomenon describes the fact that a particular liking for often consumed products can be developed (Derndorfer, 2012). Research, already done in this area with a variety of products, tries to find connections between consumption behaviours of certain products over a period of time. Mennella et al. (2001) found out that babies whose mothers consumed carrot juice during pregnancy or in the first two months of lactation preferred cereals mixed with carrot juice to cereals mixed with water as first solid food. Results of another study, where women consumed products with anise flavours (or not) were pretty similar. Newborn babies whose mothers consumed anise reacted positively to the smell of anise oil immediately after birth and on day four, whereas their counterparts, whose mothers did not consume anise, did not (Schaal et al., 2000). Others investigated if repeated exposure to sweetened/soured orangeade and yoghurt respectively has influence on overall liking of children. Children exposed to the sweet lemonade preferred it in the end (and to a lesser extend the yoghurt as well), but this was not the case with the group being exposed to the soured food systems or the control group (Liem and de Graaf, 2004). This phenomenon could also be shown with rather unpleasant foodstuff like chillies. Those are traditionally not consumed during pregnancy and lactation in Mexico, b
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