According to new research conducted by Michigan State University, long gone are the days where we matched our wine with our foodstuffs – we should instead drink wines that match our personality.

After researchers surveyed a group of participants to find out what food and wine they drank together, they soon discovered that wine drinkers can actually be separated into personality types. 

Named ‘vinotypes’, these four categories of wine drinker are split into what the team termed sweet, sensitive, hypersensitive and tolerant drinkers, reports The Independent.

First up is the sweet drinker. Apparently, these drinkers are as picky about their wines as they are about everything else in their lives. Piercing shade aside, it’s worth noting that if you are a sweet wine drinker, you also want a light wine that isn’t too strong. These drinkers also tend to love a very generous helping of salt on their food.

Hypersensitive wine drinkers may opt for sweet wines, but they’re also open to a simple and clean vino. As they’re sensitive to the world around them, they like the things that enrich their senses – such as their wines – to be finely tuned, preferring to fiddle with the thermostat and loving turning the volume down on the TV.

If you’re in the sensitive category, meanwhile, you’re known as a wine free spirit. These drinkers can accommodate most types of wine, and are flexible and adventurous. Unlike sweet wine drinkers, they tend to take life with a pinch of salt, rather than one excessive serving.

Right at the other end of the spectrum is the tolerant drinker, we’re told. These wines are for the intense and the bold, both in flavour and personality. Full-bodied reds are a penchant for the group, and match their decisive, loud personalities. Coffee lovers and cheese aficionados, this category is for you.

However, one sommelier has warned against placing people into ‘stereotyped boxes’ too much when it comes to their wine taste.

“What intrigues me here is how the researchers claim we all too often limit our food and wine pairings by putting them into stereotyped boxes, but isn’t that exactly what they are doing here with just four broad buckets of their so-called vinotypes?” said Adrian Smith to The Independent.

“Typical food and wine pairings are a good benchmark because they allow people to explore territories and slowly broaden their horizons to discover new things,” he added.

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