I'm not sure of the qualifications held by the tasters in the study and the quality of the descriptors used, but I've spent quite a bit of time with people training for the advanced level of The Court of Master Sommeliers. At first, I was a skeptic of wine tasting but they completely changed my mind after doing a number of blind tastings with them. They would usually be able to pick out the variety of grape(s) used along with a rough part of the world the wine came from during blind tastings.
> differences between white and red wine are imaginary
In most cases, they're not. There are some exceptions such as light bodied reds that can be very similar in taste to some orange or white wines, but largely, each wine has different chemical composition (different polyphenolic profiles) and a good sommelier can tell the difference. Here's the deductive tasting format used by 'the court' if you interested in all the different things you can look for in a wine: https://www.mastersommeliers.org/sites/default/files/ES%20Ta...