Making scents of wine aromas
A wine’s scent is one of the best indications of its quality. The hedonic effects of wine are influenced by hundreds of volatile aroma compounds, making it one of the most complex of food and
beverage products.
Category: Scent
Learning to Perceive
While perceptual learning plays an important role in evaluating wine, there’s another phenomenon related to perception that arises from the wine itself: perceptual interaction. When our olfactory system
is confronted with complex aromas, we often perceive them as a single aroma due to odor blending in a process known as
configural perception (our perception of the smell of coffee as a single aroma is just one of many examples).
The Multitasking Tongue (Chinese translation)
Deborahparkerwong.com contributor Rex Ting-chia has translated The Multitasking Tongue for our Chinese language readers. You can find the pdf here[…]
Read more
The Anosmia Threat
In the United Kingdom, anosmia and ageuisa have been stronger predictors
of COVID-19 than fever. As of April 1 out of 400,000 people reporting one or
more symptoms on a mobile tracking app developed at King’s College London, 18% had lost their sense of smell or taste and 10.5% were experiencing fever.
Falling hard for Petrichor
The term petrichor was derived from the Greek words petra (stone) and ichor (the blood of the gods) by researchers Isabel Joy Bear and Richard Thomas in their 1964 paper “Nature of Argillaceous Odour” to describe the scent of rain.
Read more
The Multitasking Tongue
Although we understand the physiology of the olfactory epithelium, the organ where volatile aroma compounds are converted in to the electrochemical signals that we perceive as aromas, smell or olfaction is still largely a mystery. For example, we have 400 types of olfactory receptors but we don’t know which volatile aroma compounds activate the majority of them.
Read more
The Taste of Scent
As anyone who has held their nose in an effort to swallow something unpleasant is aware, our ability to taste is inextricably linked to our sense of smell.
Read more