Ontology building process: The wine domain

Abstract

Several attempts have been made to structure and systematize the enology field. This work proposes a new ontology for the wine domain according to several features: (i) maceration; (ii) fermentation process; (iii) grape maturity state; (iv) wine characteristics; (v) classification system according to country; and (vi) region where the wine was produced. This work describes how this ontology was built by non-ontology engineering experts from scratch. The development process followed four phases: (i) knowledge acquisition; (ii) conceptualization; (iii) formalization; and (iv) evaluation. Some of these phases occurred simultaneously (for example, evaluation was done in all phases). The final outcome was an useful and comprehensive ontology in the enology field, which we plan to use in a system that allows searching for wines using any combination of features.