Registration Only: Tamara Amaya: tamara@catenazapata.com

“CRACKING THE AGING CODE,” Dr. Laura Catena and the Catena Institute of Wine in collaboration with UC Davis, presents preliminary findings from a unique study on wine aging potential. The study integrates sensory evaluation and chemical analysis to better understand and predict a wine’s ability to maintain or improve quality over time. Expert tastings were conducted in five culturally distinct cities across four continents using commercial Argentine wines from multiple vintages. Through descriptive profiling, hedonic scaling, and multivariate statistical modeling, the research examines expert perceptions of aging quality, quantifies key volatile aging markers, explores relationships between chemical and sensory data, and assesses whether aged wine typicity is culturally shared or culturally constructed.