Impact of learning and training on wine expertise: a review

[Display omitted] •Sensitization and habituation may play a role in ability to pick out relevant information from wine.•The functionality of mental imagery training was demonstrated for the wine experts.•Mental imagery may play an important role in wine discrimination and categorization. Experts are able to conduct both analytical and holistic tasks involved in evaluating wine quality. Although there is no standard for wine-tasting training, a number of papers have reported on experts’ ability to discriminate among and categorize wines, highlighting a process involving perceptual clues and cognitive processing. This review focuses on the influence of different training tasks on tasting and olfactory abilities. Moreover, recent researches in psychophysics and neurosciences demonstrated the potential functionality of mental imagery. The ability to create mental images may play an important role in discrimination and categorization, but is dependent on preliminary perceptual, attentional, and semantic training.