Analisi Sensoriale dell’Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale

SUMMARY Sensory evaluation of traditional balsamic vinegars both from Modena and Reggio Emilia provinces was performed according to the procedures presently in use aiming to analyze vinegar quality for classification purposes, also the effectiveness and affordability of such procedures were assessed. Results highlighted some criticisms: (1) lack of independence among sensory judgments due to falling back on some key “helping information”, such as Brix degree and total acidity; (2) lack of independence among sensory judgments due to the influence of the visual inspection of the vinegars as it is performed before the olfactory and tasting ones; (3) redundancy of sensory descriptors; (4) low exploitation of judges discriminative ability. The need to improve the sensory procedures according to scientific criteria is well evident in order to assure a major effectiveness and dependability. Therefore some suggestions have been proposed, including the instrumental determination of density, fluidity and color as well as the need to perform the olfactory and tasting evaluations before the visual one. Finally, a new sensory lexicon has been developed which is able to improve today’s sensory procedures they have been proposed as a starting point for future works aiming to give the identification and classification of traditional balsamic vinegars according to their sensory quality.