Do window treatments protect the acceptability for sale of red and white wine?
Light-struck taints in wine develop when they are exposed to sunlight and elevated temperature. Affected wines undergo a colour change, a decrease in fruit flavours and a development of off-flavours that have been described as cooked cabbage and/or corn nuts. This poses a problem in retail stores that have a large number of external facing windows that can potentially expose wines to these factors. Although stores can place products in an area that minimizes their exposure, this leads to an inefficient use of the retail space.
To determine whether a protective treatment applied to the windows could allow greater use of that retail space, a study was conducted in two phases (phase 1: Jan. 18, 2017 to Apr. 11, 2017, and phase 2: Jun. 06, 2017 to Sep. 25, 2017) using three stores with external windows facing different directions (1.301˚NW, 2. 145˚SW, 3. 91˚E). In each phase a commercially available red and white wine were used to study the protective ability of three different window treatments: 1. Window Film, 2. Sunscreen, and 3. Window Film + Sunscreen. Every week a sample from each store was taken to be analyzed using a spectrophotometer and assessed by at least five experienced wine tasters. The assessment comprised of two sections: 1. A tetrad test to compare each sample and a warehouse stored control sample, and 2. Acceptability for sale.
Although a significant difference could be seen between the wines using a spectrophotometer, the assessors did not detect a significant sensory difference between the samples stored under different conditions. Overall, all the samples were acceptable for sale. This demonstrates the effectiveness of applying treatments to external facing windows in preventing quality degradation, which allows the use of the retail space without compromising consumer acceptability.
Kim, D., Castura, J.C., & Findlay, C. F. (2018). Do window treatments protect the acceptability for sale of red and white wine? Society of Sensory Professionals 2018 Conference. 26-28 September. Cleveland, OH, USA. (Poster).