Flavor Hedonics: Pleasure and the Physiology of Taste

Tasting is an important tool for evaluating wines, as it exerts a decision-making role at the various stages of production and distribution chains of consumption. Tasting is also the instrument of wine critics and of wine contest judges. Assessment of specialized critics and the results obtained in wine contests exert great influence over wine market. The outcome of these evaluations, nevertheless, has revealed poor accuracy, precision and reproducibility. Still, the wine market is strongly influenced by such results. This thesis introduces a revision on anatomical and physiological knowledge of the sense organs involved in the sensory evaluation of wines. The chemical basis for the origin of wines organoleptic characteristics regarding their appearance, aroma and oral sensations is also analyzed. Based on this knowledge, the causes of errors, deviations and inaccuracy in wine tasting are then discussed, as well as how these factors contribute to illusory results at wine contests and to the assessment made by skilled critics, which is often dissociated of consumer’s perception. The influence on the market and wine prices of the evaluation performed by specialized critics and awards obtained in contests have been focused in this analysis as well. Some options of wines assessment are herein proposed, in order to meet the needs of regular consumers.

Tasting is an important tool for evaluating wines, as it exerts a decision-making role at the various stages of production and distribution chains of consumption. Tasting is also the instrument of wine critics and of wine contest judges. Assessment of specialized critics and the results obtained in wine contests exert great influence over wine market. The outcome of these evaluations, nevertheless, has revealed poor accuracy, precision and reproducibility. Still, the wine market is strongly influenced by such results. This thesis introduces a revision on anatomical and physiological knowledge of the sense organs involved in the sensory evaluation of wines. The chemical basis for the origin of wines organoleptic characteristics regarding their appearance, aroma and oral sensations is also analyzed. Based on this knowledge, the causes of errors, deviations and inaccuracy in wine tasting are then discussed, as well as how these factors contribute to illusory results at wine contests and to the assessment made by skilled critics, which is often dissociated of consumer’s perception. The influence on the market and wine prices of the evaluation performed by specialized critics and awards obtained in contests have been focused in this analysis as well. Some options of wines assessment are herein proposed, in order to meet the needs of regular consumers.

In the wine world, blind tasting—tasting without knowing the wine's producer, origin, or other details obtainable from the wine's label—is consistently vaunted as the gold standard for tasting. 1 It is held out as the best, most neutral, least biased, and most honest evaluative procedure, and one that should be employed to the exclusion of non-blind/sighted tasting (which, in turn, is typically disparaged as confused, biased, or dishonest).

Chemical Senses, 2001

We can explain the different tastes of two wines by the differences in their compounds. However, we cannot explain what a wine tastes like solely in terms of its chemical compounds. The same active compounds can affect individual tasters quite differently because of differences in their thresholds of perception. Moreover, the effects of different compounds on our senses can give rise to cross-modal interactions where sensations of, say, sweetness, can be enhanced by a vanilla aroma without a corresponding increase in the wine's sugar levels. This makes it difficult to relate the micro-chemical composition of a wine to the perception of its tastes or flavours. However, we can achieve a better understanding of the relation between a wine's compounds and its taste profile once we recognize the dynamic and cross-modal nature of taste perception. The full story of the impact of certain compounds on tasters will have to take account of the cross-modal influence one sense has on another. I will illustrate the sort of account that is needed by reference to recent findings in perceptual psychology and cognitive neuroscience.

Phenomenology and Mind Online Journal 2013, pp. 292-313 ISSN 2280-7853 (print), ISSN 2239-4028, 2013

Recently, psychologists and neuroscientists have provided a great deal of evidence showing that perceptual experiences are mostly multimodal. As perceivers, we don’t usually recognize them as such. We think of the experiences we are having as either visual, or auditory or tactile, not realising that they often arise from the fusion of different sensory inputs. The experience of tasting something is one such case. What we call ‘taste’ is the result of the multisensory integration of touch taste and smell. These unified flavour experiences provide a challenge when trying to reconcile the underlying processing story with the conscious experience of subjects, but they also challenge assumptions about our access to our own experiences and whether how we conceive of those experiences plays any in role in accounting for their ultimate nature.

Erkenntnis, 2018

A position has been advanced by a number of philosophers, notably by Burnham and Skilleås, that certain knowledge is required to aesthetically appreciate a fine wine. Further, they argue that pleasure is not an integral part of aesthetically appreciating wine. Their position implies that a wine novice cannot aesthetically appreciate a fine wine. This paper draws on research into tasting and psychology to rebut these claims. I argue that there is strong evidence from both the average consumer and from wine experts that they are unable to separate enjoyment from aesthetic evaluation; secondly, I argue that wine knowledge may actually preclude tasting of the wine as it exists in the glass due to perceptual bias. I conclude by arguing that there is good reason for thinking that a wine novice may be more able to appreciate a fine wine, since perceptual bias will not be interfering with their sense perception of what is in the glass. Link to PDF: https://rdcu.be/LJXu

Biosemiotics, 2009

The object of our paper is to examine how wine-related knowledge and practices play an important role in determining the respective flavour experiences of novice wine drinkers and sommeliers. We defend the idea that sensation is informed by knowledge, as it circulates in a cultural environment. Biosemiotics has developed appropriate concepts helping us understand how the same wine can generate diverging experiences. Within a biosemiotic framework, we consider wine flavours as relational, semiosic experiences produced by the convergence of sensory-discriminative, motivational-affective and cognitive-evaluative factors. Drawing from fundamental biosemiotics we argue that these factors vary according to the creature and its simultaneously biological and cultural umwelt. We conclude by examining a series of empirical studies consolidating the idea that sensation is informed by knowledge and language.