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
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.
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.
25 Wines Spied in “Drops of God” Second Season
French wines takes center stage in season two.
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.
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.
Sweet Wine Becomes a Bridge to Dry
Let’s introduce novice wine consumers to the sweet wines of the world first and bridge them to dry styles made from the same grape varieties.
Reproducing Kopke’s 50-year old Tawny Port
With the creation of a new Tawny Port and White Port categories in March 2022, bottles sporting a 50-year age statement on their labels began to make their debut in January 2023. Prior to the new ruling, cask-matured Tawny and White Ports were categorized as ten, 20, 30, or over 40 years of age; at 50 years, the wines were simply categorized as Very Old. Fifty is the average age of the rare wood-aged Ports from several vintages comprising these blends. In the case of Tawny, one key sensory aspect is the absence of aromas and flavors associated with new oak, which it is never aged in. Kopke, the oldest of Portugal’s Port houses, was established in 1638and possesses one of the deepest inventories of aged Tawnies in theDouro Valley. Along with a handful of other producers, including Messias, Sandeman, Taylor, Quinta do Mourão, and Quinta do Vallado, it has now released a 50-year-old bottling. In honor of the launch, Kopke master blender Carla Tiago led a blendingexercise hosted by Skurnik Wines & Spirits at …
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.
Meet the wine pro behind Drops of God
Where so many fictional movies that explore wine have failed, Drops of God which is an eight-part series inspired by the New York Times bestselling Japanese graphic novel (manga) series has set the bar for its depiction of wine culture and sensorial appreciation. Originally created and written by Tadashi Agi and illustrated by Shu Okimoto, the manga series was adapted for Apple TV by Quoc Dang Tran and executive produced by Klaus Zimmermann with the collaboration of Sébastien Pradal, a career sommelier whose depth of experience defined the role wine plays in this tense family drama. Pradal is general manager and owner of a handful of companies that import and distribute fine French wines to the trade in Paris, France, and Mexico, and the restaurant La Petite Régalade and sister bistronomie La Pascade which offer a wine list reflective of both his access and focus on smaller organic and biodynamic producers. Add vigneron to his many roles as he is a partner in Domaine Montrozier which lies directly north of Narbonne in the Côtes de Millau AOP. As wine consultant to the fictional series …
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.
Why is pu-erh the Pinot Noir of teas
Red-wine drinkers gravitate to the robust flavors and wine-like tannins of rich, intense pu-erh teas. They exhibit aromas and flavors that are found in wines like Pinot Noir: earth, forest floor, mushroom and even barnyard.”
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?
Flavor-tripping with the miracle fruit Asaba
As a species, we’ve been eating and drinking to intentionally alter our states of perception ever since. For generations, the indigenous peoples of the Congo, Nigeria, and Ghana have used the fruit (and leaves) of Synsepalum dulcificum, a shrub indigenous to West
and Central Africa, in ethnomedicine. The taste-altering properties of this flavorless, bright-red berry—dubbed “the miracle fruit,” it’s about the size of a coffee bean—make for a fascinating sensory experience.
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.
Genetic Diversity Enhances Human Olfaction
The sequence of 400 or so genes that control human olfaction is considered
by geneticists to be unusually diverse among animal species. Until recently,
researchers thought that any deviations resulting from that diversity led to a reduction in perception, but the results of a new sensory study have revealed otherwise.
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.
The Sauvignon Blancs of Concours Mondial du Sauvignon
There is no better time to gauge the quality and stylistic range of Sauvignon Blanc than during the only international wine competition devoted solely to the variety: the 2020 Concours Mondial du Sauvignon, which unfolded in Touraine, France, in early March.
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.
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.
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.
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 trilemma of primary, secondary and tertiary aromas
Primary wine flavors (the combination of aromas and tastes) come from the grape variety itself and are almost always fruity except when they’re not. Secondary aromas are those associated with post-fermentation winemaking and include yeast, lees, yogurt, cream, butter or cheese and a full spectrum of flavors derived from oak. Tertiary flavors are defined as deliberate oxidation, fruit development, bottle age or any combination thereof.
Pyrazines: A double-edged sword
Pyrazines—too much of a good thing and they’re a fault; absent in varieties like Sauvignon Blanc and they leave something to be desired. In relation to bitterness, pyrazines can be the source of a flaw or fault, but that’s just one of many ways they can impact wine flavor. Ask any maker of Bordeaux varieties, someone who grows grapes in a marginal climate or experiences a colder vintage, about their concerns, and they’ll surely count elevated pyrazines among them. Admittedly, pyrazines are a double-edged sword. Without them we wouldn’t have the expansive range of wine styles that are possible from Sauvignon Blanc or the markers that help us identify the family of Bordeaux varieties and the likes of Carmenère. But in the extreme, pyrazines dominate wine at the expense of other varietal flavors. We’ve all tasted them—from pungently herbaceous boxwood (the polite reference to cat pee) and jalapeño pepper in Sauvignon Blanc to rank green bell pepper or even weeds in red wines that haven’t achieved physiological ripeness. Pyrazines are the family of volatile organic …
Your glass is half full
Minerality — Without question the most controversial and elusive of wine descriptors. This comes as no surprise given that the exact definition of what minerals themselves are is still under debate and has been expanded as an element or compound formed through “biogeochemical” processes. Nutrient or dietary minerals—single elements like manganese, potassium, magnesium, iron, phosphorus, calcium, copper and zinc—are minor components of red wine. White wines have small amounts of iron, calcium, potassium, phosphorus and zinc. A serving of wine can also contain several milligrams of halite, the mineral salt (sodium chloride is the chemical name for salt), and we can accurately describe its taste in wine as saline minerality. Knowing that wine contains minerals, why is describing minerality so problematic? Largely because aside from halite, nutrient minerals are essentially tasteless. Only when they’re in a highly concentrated liquid form, for example as a dietary supplement, do they taste offensively bitter. But the elusive flavors we describe as “mineral” in some wines can be readily attributed to specific compounds. The two of the most common …
Riedel celebrates 260 years of glassware expertise
There’s no question that glassware can alter our perceptions of wine. It’s a phenomenon experienced by every resourceful consumer who has pressed a plastic cup into service when a wineglass wasn’t close. While the proliferation of shapes intended to complement or enhance specific wines has been met with skepticism from certain corners, without empirical evidence to the contrary, simply increasing the measure of enjoyment that’s obtained from a glass of wine has validated the practice and the efforts of Austrian glassware maker Riedel. Science has already provided empirical evidence that makes a case for the superiority of wine glasses for the appreciation of wine. Using a thermal imaging technique, Japanese researchers have captured pictures of ethanol vapors volatizing from a wine glass in a ring-shaped pattern, with the area of lowest alcohol in the center. This “donut hole” effect allows for greater appreciation of volatile aroma compounds without the added interference from ethanol. When wine was tested from a Martini or straight glass it didn’t exhibit a ring shaped-vapor pattern, proof enough that wine glasses …
Bitterness: Examing the chemistry behind the taste sensation
Humans are particularly sensitive to bitterness. Thanks to a small but novel family of 30 genes, we can perceive thousands of bitter compounds. Our ability to discern bitter tastes evolved as a way to keep our early ancestors from eating poisonous plants. Bitterness is a taste sensation that we experience when monomeric flavonoid phenols, the compounds that are responsible for bitterness in wine, reach the bitter taste receptor cells on our taste buds. As the receptors send electrochemical signals to the gustatory cortex, we experience bitterness. To what degree determines whether we consider a wine to be merely complex, flawed or faulted. Read the entire article here –Bitterness June July 2016