Old Vines Have New Meaning
Wines made from old vines have a more powerful phenolic structure, greater aromatic complexity, and more intensity with respect to expressing the characteristics of the vineyards they were sourced from.
All posts filed under: sensory science
Senses Perform Better Holistically, Not in Isolation
Professionals who consider detecting and identifying aromas part of their stock in trade would be far more confident about their abilities if they had a better understanding of how the senses work together to interpret aromas.
Conquer wine headaches
Thanks to new research about quercetin, the list of culprits in wine falls into three primary categories: tannins, biogenic amines (BAs), and alcohol.
Olfaction is Better When Paired with Sight
Humans may use their sense of sight more,
but through smell, we can determine such things as the quality and consistency of foods and beverages.
Aphantasia, revealing the Blind Mind’s Eye
Anywhere from 1% to 4% of the population is affected by aphantasia, meaning their mind’s eye is effectively blind.
New Metrics for Wine Competition Medals
In 2021, The prestigious Concours Mondial de Bruxelles (CMB) wine competition began using artificial intelligence (AI) developed by Winespace, a Bordeaux-based firm founded by Sylvain Thibaud and Julian Laithier in 2015, as part of its judging protocol as a valueadded feedback mechanism for producers.
The Science of Bubbles
Bubbles are the hallmark of all sparkling wines, and they play a significant role in the cachet that surrounds this category. Even the terms “bubbles,” “mousse,” and “Champagne” elicit a pleasurable response in expert and novice consumers alike.
The Vanilla Bias
According to neuroscientist Camilla Arndal Andersen, how consumers describe the taste of food can be misleading largely due to inherent biases. Among the most problematic is the “courtesy bias,” which comes into play when people respond with what they see as a socially acceptable opinion that doesn’t accurately reflect how they feel. There’s also the “bias blind spot,” in which we think we’re less biased than others. In short, we’re biased about our biases.
Hidden compounds: the secret to aromatic complexity
Of the more than 1,000 compounds that make up wine’s aromatic profile, desirable aromas are represented by a combination of 82 different volatile compounds, only some of which are detectable when present above threshold.
Wine aromas promote relaxation
Wine aromas are t work when we pour a glass of grassy Sauvignon Blanc and feel a deep sense of relief.
Glitchy neurons learn to discern aromas
Due to their reputation as vectors for Brettanomyces and their unwelcome presence when discovered swimming in one’s glass, fruit flies have long been viewed as annoying pests by wine drinkers. But as research subjects, they’re surprisingly beneficial: Their brains are teaching us more about how we humans learn to differentiate aromas.
Decoding the Origins of Wine Aromas
Researchers have identified compounds responsible for coconut and dried fruit aromas in red grape must and new wine.
Stem Compounds Help Reduce Alcohol and Boost Freshness
There’s more to wine grape stems than tannin. The discovery of new stem compounds has prompted researchers at the Laboratoire Excell biochemistry lab in Bordeaux to re-evaluate the benefits of including stems during this crucial stage of production.
Deconstructing Aged Amarone
For Lonardi, the drying process known as appassimento that’s used to make Amarone produces wines that are expressive of terroir. Researchers studying
the compounds found in Corvina—the indigenous grape that is the foundation of the wine’s blend—agree. Typical markers for Corvina include balsamic and tobacco notes that increase during appassimento, and the presence of these markers in aged wines points to specific vintage conditions.
Biogenic amine toxicity a reality for histamine-sensitive consumers
By now, most informed wine consumers have accepted the fact that sulfur isn’t the root cause of wine-derived headaches and instead place most of the blame on alcohol. Meanwhile, what has been identified as a source of adverse reactions to no- and low-sulfur red wines, particularly by histamine-sensitive consumers, are biogenic amines. What are they and why can they be a problem?
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).
Age drives complexity in sparkling wine
After tasting the Piper-Heidsieck Hors-Série 1971 ($499), a rare, late disgorged Champagne that spent 49 years resting peacefully on its lees, I was inspired to delve deeper into the role yeast autolysis plays in the flavor development of sparkling wine.
The duality of-smell phenomenon
Our sense of smell is based on two delivery pathways, orthonasal and retronasal; that makes it the only “dual sense modality” we possess, one that provides information about things both external and internal to the body.
We’re losing Syrah’s peppery notes
Now the days of comparing a
glass of Northern Rhône Syrah to
a strip of peppered bacon appear
to be coming to an end.
Following Malbec’s fingerprints to identify terroir
What Argentina’s savvy winemakers have known for many decades—that certain vineyards reliably produce superlative wines despite vintage variations—is now scientific fact.
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 –
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.
In Pursuit of Sensory Literacy
When Sonoma’s La Crema Winery turned 40 last year, it celebrated the milestone with a unique exercise: Led by Dr. Henry “Hoby” Wedler, it was easily one of my top sensory experiences of 2019.
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.
Wine 123: Causation and Detection of Wine Defects Offered at Santa Rosa JC
I’ll be teaching Wine 123: Causation and Detection of Wine Defects at Santa Rosa JC next semester (Spring 2020). Check out our video courtesy of the Distance Learning department’s Emily Hansen –
Thinking in Smell
Of the five senses, smell in Western culture has gotten a bad rap. In the English language there are fewer positive equivalents for the sense of smell than there are for the other four senses. You might sniff out a deal or smell a rat but the terms for nose in our vocabulary particularly as they relate to wine are more often than not derogatory (snobby, snooty, snotty, etc.).
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.
Spring vegetables present unique wine-pairing challenges
It seems a Ph.D. in organic chemistry is necessary to fully understand the
issue, but wine science educator Deborah Parker Wong can provide some insight into what happens when certain vegetables meet the palate.
The Not-So-Great Divide
A recent study conducted at jointly at Penn State University and the University of California Davis illustrates significant differences in what consumers and self-described wine experts find likeable in wine.
The wines in question were six pairs of unoaked Chardonnay that had been doctored with increasing amounts of the compound – methyl anthralinate (MA) – that gives some native American vitis labruscana grape varieties their “grapey-ness.”
Are you experienced?
The odor of wet dog isn’t exactly something we want to detect in wine, but
experiencing this scent after a communal hike at Kunde Family Winery in Sonoma Valley could actually prove enjoyable.
Thickheaded Somms: Examining the neuroscience behind expert wine tasting
Among our many activities, wine professionals devote a considerable amount of time to perception, the state of being where we become aware of something through the senses.
Big data supports expert wine tasters
In the course of developing software for predicting consumer wine preferences, a Houston-based start up, VineSleuth, shed new light on the abilities of expert wine tasters and the validity of blind tasting assessments. Contrary to popular belief, the company’s VineSleuth metrics, which are based on the work of Chief Science Officer Michael Tompkins and his team, reveal that tasters can consistently identify aroma and flavor characteristics in blind wine evaluations. “We have extensive experimental data which support that expert evaluators have the capacity to precisely identify wine characteristics in blind repeat samples,” said Tompkins whose work spans thirteen years in the field of numerical methods. “During the course of our experiments, our vetted evaluators repeat sample characteristics about 90% of the time,” he says. VineSleuth’s data directly confronts the popular misconception that consistent sensory evaluation of wine is a random occurrence. In developing an algorithm designed to help consumers make wine selections based on personal preference, the company has established a benchmark based on the results of its top-performing tasters (including this author) and intends …
Natural cork, a scapegoat for wine defects
When wine professionals encounter a sensory deviation in wine and the offending molecule isn’t obvious, cork often takes the blame by default.
The Myth Buster: Dr. Paulo Lopes dispels long-held beliefs about cork
When it comes to wine storage, old habits are hard to break. But Dr. Paulo Lopes, Research and Development Manager at Amorim Cork, advises that if temperature and humidity are maintained at the correct levels, wine can be stored upright with no ill effects. In fact, sparkling wine should always be stored upright: a little-known fact that seems lost on many wine experts. During the course of his groundbreaking research, Lopes has seen no difference in the amount of oxygen found in wines that have been stored horizontally or vertically. Using science to debunk the myths that persist within wine culture is liberating largely because the facts can be even more compelling than the misleading maxims. In his recent presentation at the San Francisco Wine School on the reductive and oxidative nature of wine, Lopes made it abundantly clear that, after bottling, the main source of oxygen in wine comes from the cork itself. Atmospheric oxygen doesn’t make its way through the cork (neither does mold, for that matter); rather, the air trapped in cork’s …
The good, the bad and the ugly
Many who consider the sensory evaluation of wine to be a purely subjective exercise cite our differences in perception as the basis for that belief. While it’s true that our abilities to perceive aromas and tastes vary, using an olfactometer we’re able to accurately measure the thresholds at which different tasters perceive the volatile organic compounds found in wine. Research has also shown that a like group of tasters, those who are equal to the task, can consistently gauge the intensities of the aromas, tastes and structural aspects of wine. Compared to humans, who scientists believe can detect in excess of one trillion odors and identify a few thousand, the latest generation of olfactory and gustatory biosensors can detect up to 350 smells in about 15 seconds. Developed by a molecular biologist and nanobioscientist in Grenoble, France, the Aryballe Technologies NeOse Pro, a handheld e-nose that made its debut at the Consumer Electronics Show this January, uses surface plasmon resonance imaging (SPRi) and biochemical sensors to analyze volatile organic compounds responsible for aroma and taste. …