Ann C. Noble

Ann C Noble
Fields	Wine chemistry
Institutions	University of California, Davis
Alma mater	University of Massachusetts
Known for	Aroma Wheel

Ann C. Noble is a sensory chemist and retired professor from the University of California, Davis. During her time at the UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology, Noble invented the "Aroma Wheel" which is credited with enhancing the public understanding of wine tasting and terminology. At the time of her hiring at UC Davis in 1974, Noble was the first woman hired as a faculty member of the Viticulture department. Noble retired from Davis in 2002 and in 2003 was named Emeritus Professor of Enology. Since retirement she has participated as a judge in the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition.

After earning her Ph.D. in Food science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Noble was hired by UC Davis in 1974 to work in their sensory research program. After studying the techniques and application of wine tasting, Noble discovered that there was no objective framework or widely agreed upon terminology that a wine taster could use to describe things such as "earthy" aromas or the different smells of various fruits that can show up in a wine. In 1984, her research lead her to develop the "Aroma Wheel". Other research work went into how a wine's aroma and flavor can influence consumer choices as well as how wine tasters perceive of astringency in wine. Noble, in addition to her work on the wine aroma wheel, also did research on multivariate statistics of sensory data and its applications. She also published over 150 research papers in her time there.

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