Calvin Trillin wrote an essay for The New Yorker a few years ago that described a blind tasting among wine experts in which red and white wines were served in black glasses, so the color of the wine was hidden. Trillin gloated that the experts could not always tell the difference between red and white wines.
Trillin's making fun of wine tasting was like striking out the pitcher. There has been so much nonsense associated with wine tasting that it is easy to make fun of it.
Another wine taste test found that experts believe expensive wine tastes better than cheap wine. The experts were given three glasses of the same wine, but told the wine was priced differently. They were told one wine was priced less than $15, one was priced between $15 and $30, and the third was priced more than $30. The experts preferred the wine they believed was the most expensive. None of the experts guessed that all three glasses held the same wine.
Taste is so complex that any simplistic taste test can go awry for many reasons. Sometimes a wine will be extraordinarily delicious, and then another day the same wine will be disappointing, depending on one’s mood, what food is eaten or not eaten with the wine, the aromas in the room, what is on the breeze coming in the window, the state of one’s personal relationships, and, for all anyone knows, the position of the stars and planets. Set up a black glass test and anyone might fail it. Is it red wine or white? Cheap or expensive?
The Mouth
The 10,000 or so taste buds in the mouth are sensitive to only five tastes: sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and omani (flavor). All tastes are composed of just those five elements. Like fingerprints, each person’s collection of taste buds is unique, so everyone’s taste is unique. Moreover, different parts of the mouth are sensitive to certain tastes. For wine, the tip of the tongue is most sensitive to sweetness, the sides of the tongue most sensitive to acid, the middle of the tongue to tannin, the back of the tongue to alcohol. So a sip of wine may taste different depending on how long it stays in, or bypasses, a part of the mouth. A sip held in the forward part of the mouth will taste sweeter than a sip held in the cheeks. Every sip of the same wine can have a completely different taste.
The Nose
The nose is lined with hundreds of receptors sensitive to the volatile aromatics given off by wine. Those receptors are able to detect thousands of different smells. Aromatic molecules from the wine travel over the receptors to the olfactory nerve endings in the roof of the mouth. The nose then sends a signal to the brain which decides whether the smell is good or bad, based on memory, emotion, and instinct.
So a combination of taste and smell determines whether the wine tastes good or bad, and identifies smells and tastes storied in memory, including smells of such things as flowers, leather, and wood; and tastes such as citrus, chocolate, and mint. The signals also travel to the emotional centers in the temporal cortex, so the wine may trigger a memory of a pleasant or unpleasant emotional experience, often subconsciously.
Reidel, the Austrian maker of wine glasses, claims its glasses make wine taste better because its glasses are shaped to match different varieties of wine. The shapes are designed to deliver the wine to that part of the mouth -- front, side, or back – that best compliments the wine’s characteristic flavors, or to expose the aroma to the nose in the best way. Reidel cites blind taste tests to prove it.
The Ears
Music affects mood. It elicits emotion: happiness, sadness, a pleasant place, a favorite person, a sorrowful or joyful time. Because taste also has an emotional component, the emotion invoked by the music can change the taste of the wine. The Suite 101 article Having Fun with Wine Tasting, explains how to experience the affect of music on wine.
One may not always be able to tell red wine from white wine in a black glass, or whether it is cheap or expensive. But almost every wine drink will be a different experience. And what one likes and doesn't like will change with time, memory, mood, and experience.
Many thanks to Michaela Rodeno, St. Supery Vineyards and Winery, for her advice and counsel in writing this article.
(If you liked this article, you might also like What to Look for In Tasting Wine.)
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