“Scents of bacon; fresh cherry and red raspberry shadowed by their distilled counterparts; violet, honeysuckle, and acacia; musk; lavender and other resinous herbs; along with pungently bittersweet citrus oils, all capture one’s attention. Their counterparts on an infectiously juicy, fine-grained and strikingly buoyant palate are mingled with veal stock and mouthwateringly savory pan drippings. Cardamom and black pepper add yet greater complexity. The clean, marrow-like meatiness that extends all the way through this Syrah’s lusciously long finish is anything but gamey.”

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It’s unfair to pick on Schildknecht – there are hundreds of other wine and spirits writers like him – but are these extraordinary flights of fancy about aroma and flavour of any real value? Or are they pretentious poppycock? Professor Charles Spence tends towards the latter.

“I come to this as a scientist,” says Professor Spence. “If I give you a mix of aromas in a glass, the most you will be able to detect is three distinctive notes. That is a fact. If there are only three notes that you can pick out in the lab, how on earth can some of these blind wine tasters write thousands of words about what they can smell? Something doesn’t match up.”

Professor Spence, Head of the Crossmodal Research Laboratory at the University of Oxford, is an expert in how the interplay of senses affects our experiences. He helped chef Heston Blumenthal devise his famous Sound of the Sea dish (served with seaside sounds on an iPod) and has conducted numerous experiments to explore how taste is shaped by influences, many of which we may not be conscious of.

For instance, he teamed up with sound experimentalists Condiment Junkie and The Singleton whisky to show how the taste of the drink is influenced by the environment it’s sampled in. He has also received extensive media coverage for showing how the taste of food and drink changes according to the cutlery, plates and glassware we use.

As a consequence, he is much sought after by industry, advising big brands on techniques they can use to make products more appealing – earlier this year, he was appointed Head of Sensory Marketing by creative agency JWT.

His work is supported by the findings of other academics. In 2001, Frédéric Brochet of the University of Bordeaux gave 54 wine experts what appeared to be a glass of white wine and a glass of red wine, and requested their feedback. In reality, the red wine was merely the same white wine with red food colouring added – not that it stopped the experts from describing the ‘red’ wine very differently, with phrases such as ‘crushed red fruit’ popping up.

“None of the wine experts can do what they say they can,” says Spence, “I can’t find any well-done studies that say this is what a Master of Wine is capable of – it’s all very secretive.

“Food and theatre are putting people in a space where they’re being entertained; there’s a blurring of boundaries between the restaurant and the science lab,” says Spence. He predicts that smartphone technology will have a major impact on the way we experience food and drink; as will technological developments such as glasses that light up and musical plateware.

Of course, we’re all open to suggestion. A famous piece of research from 1999 by Professor Adrian North, now at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, found that sales of German and French wine in a shop could be significantly manipulated simply by playing French or German music.

The drinks writer Pete Brown has also been enthusiastically exploring this theme by matching beers with music. It’s tongue-in-cheek, but it works. As he proved in a talk at the Green Man music festival this year, Wye Valley IPA really does go well with the mellow folk-inflected pop of Stornoway.

The joy of Spence’s research is that drink is not something to be solemnly assessed by experts in austere taste tests; it’s something to be enjoyed and embraced with all the other aspects of human sensory experience. As Spence says: “The value in a drink often lies in the story of how it’s made or where you first drank it.” Cheers to that.

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Back to Part 1: She wants to mess with your mind

 

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