Symposium Day 1 - May 19: 50 Years of Changes in Wine Perception and Demand​

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The Evolving Demands of Wine Consumers

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GLP-1 Drugs and the Unravelling of Drinking Rituals: Evidence from a Mixed-Methods Study | Felicity Carter, Founder, Drinks Insider 

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This talk presents findings from a mixed-methods observational study of GLP-1 receptor agonist users, combining survey data (n≈360) with in-depth qualitative interviews to understand how these drugs are changing alcohol consumption. Rather than a uniform reduction in drinking, the data reveal three distinct response patterns: extinction, aversion and disruption. The study also identifies a secondary disruption of behavioural scripts around drinking. For a category like wine, where meaning, identity, and ritual play a central role, this raises questions about how durable consumption patterns will be if the underlying behavioural scripts begin to erode.g France as a leader in redefining wine for the modern era.

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Human Craft, Machine Insight: The Future Wine Market?

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Wine–Cheese Pairing: Human Craft × Machine Insight | Jing Cao, Professor of Statistics, Southern Methodist University

Wine–cheese pairing is a culturally established practice traditionally guided by expert heuristics rather than systematic empirical analysis. This study adopts an exploratory, data-driven approach to investigate the mechanisms underlying perceived ideal red wine–cheese pairings using a newly curated dataset derived from expert recommendations and enriched with physicochemical, nutritional, and descriptive attributes of wines and cheeses. Numeric analyses reveal statistically significant but weak associations between wine composition (e.g., alcohol, sugar, tannin presence) and cheese attributes (e.g., carbohydrate content, saturated fat, strength), indicating that no single compositional variable strongly determines pairing success. To uncover latent sensory structures beyond these modest correlations, we apply unsupervised clustering to TF–IDF representations of combined wine and cheese tasting descriptions, identifying four robust pairing archetypes: structure–fat buffering, texture harmony, acid–salt contrast, and umami resonance. Together, the results show that ideal wine–cheese pairing is governed not by simple rules but by multidimensional sensory alignment involving texture, structure, acidity, and savory depth, and they demonstrate the value of integrating numeric and text-based analyses to reveal pairing mechanisms that are obscured when physicochemical variables are considered in isolation.

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A Chemical Map of Pinot Noir: How Terroir and Producer Style Shape Wine Identity | Alexandre Pouget, Professor in Neuroscience,  University of Geneva 

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Pinot Noir is cultivated around the world, producing wines widely admired for their complexity and finesse. Yet very little is known about how their chemical profiles vary across geographical regions, or whether terroir is indeed expressed in their chemistry. To address this question, we analysed 16 Pinot Noir crus (e.g., Domaine Brunner, or Clos des Mouches from Drouhin, ) using GC-MS from several regions, including Burgundy, Alsace, Neuchâtel, Valais, Geneva, Oregon, and California. We found that individual crus can be recognised with an accuracy approaching 80%, independent of vintage. Moreover, nonlinear dimensionality-reduction techniques reveal that these crus lie along a continuum extending from Burgundy to Alsace, Neuchâtel, Valais, and Geneva. Within Burgundy, we did not observe a clear subdivision between Côte de Beaune and Côte de Nuits. Instead, wines produced by the same estate (e.g., Jadot, Drouhins, Bourchard) tended to cluster together, suggesting that estates impose a consistent winemaking style across their various appellations. Remarkably, this stylistic fingerprint can extend beyond Burgundy: wines from Domaine Drouhin in Oregon share significant chemical similarities with their Burgundian counterparts from the same estate. Finally, we report that we can estimate the vintage with an error of roughly three years based solely on GC-MS data. Together, these results demonstrate for the first time that both geography and winemaking philosophy are major determinants of the chemical identity of Pinot Noir wines.