Perception of wine fruity and woody notes:: influence of peri-threshold odorants

In order to test the hypothesis that woody odorants at sub- and peri-threshold concentrations could modify the olfactory perception of supra-threshold fruity notes in wine, three binary mixtures of fruity and woody odorants were studied. In these mixtures, a single supra-threshold concentration level, close to the one usually found in wine, was used for the fruity note whereas three peri-threshold concentration levels of the woody note were tested. The ability to discriminate odour stimuli on the basis of the presence or absence of the woody odorants in the mixtures was investigated with a triangular test. For the three binary mixtures the results showed that subjects were able to differentiate between samples containing a woody odorant at all concentration levels from samples without a woody odorant. These findings confirmed the impact of sub- and peri-threshold components on the olfactory perception of odour mixtures, especially in the case of wine woody odorants. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.