“Anna Gomis stressed that, among other things, they defined some imprecise terms commonly used in the sector. “Some specifications included hedonic terms, such as joyful, elegant, frank, kind… You can’t measure the kindness or joy of a wine.” To put an end to the ambiguity, they specified that for a wine to be joyful, for example, it must have a specific acidity and citrus, floral and aromatic herb notes.”
Great. More rules
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Flashy press release kind of stuff but, in my view, the paper itself doesn’t really push the needle on sensory analysis of wines.
I’m 96 on that. 
Bullshit. Unmitigated bullshit. The wine that makes me happy is not the same as the wine that makes Brad Kane or Alf happy, and that’s OK. I had 1 2008 Aubert Chardonnay last night. I found it outstanding and I loved it. Someone else may have found it an overly alcoholic mess with way too much residual oak flavors. Or how about a good ultra high alcohol SQN Grenache, or even more extreme a Cayuse Bionic Frog. I love them. The Good Jay Miller thinks that they are the spawn of the devil. Neither of us is wrong.
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Both a waste of time better spent on productive human efforts and another example of potential unnecessary regulatory over-reach in an area of government intervention (food and beverage) that should end, absent any compelling need, at health and safety.
How dumb.
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It’s not productive to try to standardize the sensory analysis of wine? Or are you just griping about the PDO rules?
Do you bother to read the article before replying? This has nothing to do with saying that one wine is better than another.
Was Otto involved?
Both
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OK, I’ll bite. Why is it not productive to try to standardize the sensory analysis of wine?
Just imagine the anarchy that would ensue if you had no way of knowing whether or not a wine you bought from one of the 11 approved Catalan protected designations of origin came within the approved sensory parameters of the European Union.
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I don’t think you can standardize the sensory perception of wines until you can standardize the palates of everyone tasting them.
People tasting the same wine simply do not have the same perception. They may also lack the same vocabulary and have different levels of ability to taste. But they also just perceive flavors differently.
For that matter each individual can taste the same wine twice on two different days and there will be variations in how the wine tastes to them based upon differences in mood, fatigue, stress(or lack thereof), barometric pressure, room temperature, etc. Most of us would agree that same wine from the same bottle is very different at 60F than it is at 75. That doesn’t even address bottle variation.
To me this is a fool’s errand, and a reminder that research can sometimes miss the forest for the trees.
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Akin to standardizing sensory perception of art, music, food…
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I think the burden is to explain why you would want to. Toward what end or purpose?
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Can you imagine if a governing body dictated to Berserkers which descriptors should be used for specific sensory characteristics?
Just out of spite those descriptors would never be used again!
LOL.
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Is “throbbing blue vein” one of the permitted descriptors?
I think that descriptor was prescribed for a different industry! 
I’ll bite, you want all Rioja to have the exact same aroma and flavor? Who’s to say which one is the benchmark. What would make one producer more unique than the other? Who gets certified and who doesn’t?
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