Chapter 93 – The Perception of Riesling Varietal Character: The Role of 2,2,1-Trimethyl-Dihydronaphthalene (TDN)

The perception of wine aroma is an excellent example of the human ability to experience multiple sensations as a single gestalt, i.e. a configural perception or as a top-down process. For example, the same wine recognized as Riesling could, after some time spent on analysis, yield, “This Riesling has a moderate petrol aroma and a faint lemon smell.” Recent studies of binary mixtures showed that only similar odors cross-adapt while dissimilar odors suppress each other in mixtures, indicating a possible explanation for the suppression of fruity/floral by 2,2,1-trimethyl- dihydronaphthalene (TDN) in Riesling.