by Dwight Furrow

If there is one commonly held “truth” that governs conventional wisdom about wine tasting, it is that wine tasting is thoroughly subjective. We all have different preferences, unique wine tasting histories, and different sensory thresholds for detecting aromatic compounds. One person’s scintillating Burgundian Pinot Noir is another person’s thin, weedy plonk. But this “truth” is at best an oversimplification; like a very good Pinot Noir, matters are more complex.

Wine tasting occupies a curious, liminal space in the architecture of human experience. It is sensual yet intellectual, visceral yet highly codified, personal yet somewhat anxiously public. It is therefore persistently haunted by the question of whether it can legitimately aspire to objectivity or is it hopelessly mired in personal preference and cultural contingency.

Most discussions of this topic settle into the familiar but facile polarity between the subjectivists, who proclaim that all tasting is little more than the projection of our private whims onto liquid canvases, and the objectivists, who dream of a science of wine, a rigorous catalog of chemical facts from which flavor profiles might be derived like astronomical coordinates. Both camps miss what makes wine worth talking about in the first place: the irreducible relational character of taste.

The notion of objectivity, as it was forged in the smithy of modern science, is a curious thing. It assumes the world is composed only of discrete entities endowed with properties that exist independently of how they are observed. This account of objectivity works reasonably well when applied to the movement of planets or an analysis of the chemical constituents of wine but falters with phenomena whose existence depends on being perceived. The taste or smell of a wine is not given in isolation but unfolds as an interplay between the liquid, our sensory mechanisms, and the mind. Read more »

by Dwight Furrow

The evidence that pairing music with wine can enhance one’s tasting experience continues to mount since I last visited this topic in 2017. A research team headed by Q.J. Wang showed that, in a winery tasting room, wines tasted with a soundtrack chosen to enhance oak-derived flavors were rated as significantly fruitier and smoother than the same wines tasted in silence. Master of Wine, Susan Lin wrote her thesis on the effects of music on the taste and mouthfeel of Brut Non-Vintage Champagne. And Jo Burzynska’s published research includes a paper entitled “Tasting the Bass,” which investigates the effects of lower frequency sound on the perceived weight and body of a New Zealand Pinot Noir and a Spanish Garnacha. The study also measured the influence of pitch on aromatic intensity and the perception of acidity.

This recent research is on top of the earlier studies in which test subjects show statistically significant agreement about which wine goes best with music samples presented to them (cross-modal correspondence); and that the right music can influence specific aspects of the tasting experience, such as perception of sweetness, flavor notes, perceived acidity, and level of astringency (cross-modal influence).

For instance, in one study by British music psychologist Adrian North, subjects were offered a Cabernet Sauvignon or a Chardonnay. After rating the wines along four dimensions—powerful and heavy, subtle and refined, zingy and refreshing, and mellow and soft—they tasted the wines while listening to music chosen to highlight each dimension. Both wines were scored significantly higher on the powerful/heavy metric by those who listened to the powerful/heavy music (Orff’s Carmina Burana) and the same effect was found with the other dimensions tested. The music had similar effects on both red and white wines and was independent of whether the subjects liked the wine. There is now almost 30 years of research leading to the same conclusion. Music can enhance our appreciation of wine. This is not surprising given the evidence that all variety of environmental and contextual factors from weather to the sound of popping a cork influence the taste of a wine. Read more »