Regional Institute of Wine and Oil

Sensory analysis, tasting panel every Wednesday

IRVOS' work on sensory analysis has entered full swing. Every Wednesday afternoon, a tasting panel is held in the Institute's new laboratory created specifically for this type of exam and inaugurated a few weeks ago.

The objective is to give Sicilian wines greater characteristics from a marketing perspective: “You cannot promote a product if you don't know its specific qualities. – explains Professor Antonio Scacco, head of the laboratory – It is its sensorial peculiarities that give it identity and we therefore need to work on these”.

Taste and olfactory tests are part of sensory analysis, the same senses that are involved in the tasting technique. But the result is not the same. “Sensory analysis – Scacco is keen to underline – serves to distinguish one wine from another, one product from another”. In short, it becomes unique. “Thanks to this – adds Daniela Barbera of the Institute and expert in sensorial analysis – each producer will then be able to better know how to place and sell their own label“. Not only that, on a broad spectrum, each Sicilian wine will be able to best communicate its territory. The latter combination, product/territory, which IRVOS has embraced in recent years and which has proven to be successful. In practice, "a Sicilian taste" is born, as commented by Dario Cartabellotta, general manager of the Region's Infrastructural Interventions Department and promoter of the project during his role as director at the Institute. Sensory analysis perfects, integrates and improves everything that is part of the control and certification activity that the Regional Institute of Wines and Oils of Sicily carries out. “Quality and marketing must walk together,” says the body's extraordinary commissioner Marcello Caruso. The new laboratory is located on the 5th floor of the Institute, still in via Libertà, and is structured into three areas (one for tasting with ten stations equipped with all the technical equipment, one for the conservation of the samples and another used for tastings for DOC certifications).