What is the goal of the wine chromatic characterization in a CIE color space?

Abstract

There is a vast amount of specialized literature about color, and on the other hand, a vast amount of specialized literature about how to characterize wine color. The proposed methods to asses wine color were evolved: from Sudraud in the late 1950s through Glories in the mid-1980s to the nowadays CIE tristimulus based values. This evolution rise the question about the objective of a chromatic characterization of wines which in turns challenges the supposed advantages of evaluating the color of wine through a CIE color space. We present a bibliographic review in order to analyze the ideas behind wine color characterization. One finding of this review is the fact that wine color becomes an ambiguous concept that oscillates between a naive definition of color and a chemical one.