Disrupting the Language of Tastings
Flavour should not be exclusive, it should be a fundamental right. Yet an air of mystique that surrounds tasting fine wines and spirits can create a sense that accessibility is limited those with specialist abilities. Without a highly trained nose or proficient palate how should anyone hope to grasp such nuances of delight?
For the most part, such a divide is the unintentional consequence of articulating flavour itself. Or at least attempting to. The task of expressing abstract perception through language is a challenging one, even for ‘experts’. And as we shall see it can even be detrimental. Hence, stifling inhibition and self-doubt amongst the less experienced tasting-goers should come as no surprise. But we have the power to change this and make flavour accessible to all by shifting the focus and bringing some perspective.
Sensory segregation
Expressing the flavours of wines and spirits often enters cryptic realms. To the casual onlooker notes such as crushed stone, purity in the guise of a pretty violet echo, and an unadorned finish, can be understandably bemusing. Add to this a drizzle of pomp and ceremony and it’s easy to see how sensory excellence can be placed on an unattainable pedestal.
Newcomers to tastings can therefore feel a sense that a lack of ‘expertise’ is holding them back. The use of sometimes perplexing language can become a smoke screen behind which to hide, in a similar vein to how legal jargon requires an expert to translate. Through not wanting to say-the-wrong-thing at a tasting, a gap is created between those in the know and those out of the know.
The irony is that once we learn a little about flavour itself, the concept of having a well-developed palate becomes nonsensical. Flavour is an entirely subjective experience and is dictated by our genes plus many psychological, environmental, and cultural factors. While people can be trained to identify specific odours within a mixture, it’s only the process and language that can be standardised, and not perception itself. Flavour is quite unlike our other senses in this respect.
The fuzzy perception of flavour
Flavour is the brain’s perception based on the combined inputs from smell, taste, and mouthfeel (mouthfeel being predominantly touch sensations or somatosensation). But when people describe flavour, it’s predominantly retronasal olfaction that is discussed – odours travelling from the mouth into the nasal cavity. Compared to our other senses though, smell, taste, or mouthfeel are difficult to conceptualise and express through language.
For example, we can very accurately describe what we see and hear. Show ten people an image of a dog and they will all identify the image with remarkable accord. In contrast, ask just two people to identify the flavours in a single whisky and the results can be remarkably different. But why is this?
Flavours and odours cannot be seen or held, as is the case with visual items. They can be difficult to locate in space and seem to only occur within an intangible area somewhere inside one’s head. Odours are remarkably tricky to verbalise too. In this respect flavours are more closely related to abstract concepts such as time or thoughts. Although we can express such concepts through language their true meaning is entirely subjective. And it’s language that becomes the biggest divide when expressing flavour.
The language of experts
Unlike sight or sound, there are very few direct terms to describe odours in most languages. For example, we have unique odour words such as ‘stinky’, ‘musty’, or ‘fragrant’, but most odours are described by their sources instead, such as ‘fruity’, ‘biscuity’, or ‘chocolatey’. Also, studies show that the majority of English words are visual rather than olfactory, which makes it challenging to describe smells because our language simply lacks the words.
To substantiate the point, a study collected almost 7000 online texts that described the Lake District National Park in England from a first-person perspective. The texts were analysed for words that described The Lakes using sight, sound or smell-related perception. More than 28,000 descriptions referred to sight, almost 1500 to sound, but a mere 78 words related to smell experiences. It highlights just how dominant vision is as a sense. When was the last time you described a holiday based on its smells alone?
When people were asked to name odours in lab a setting, they guessed the source of the odour rather than using specific descriptive terms (i.e. flowers, ammonia, and manure, rather than fragrant, pungent, and putrid). This difficulty in naming odours is also called the ‘olfactory-verbal gap’. Unlike naming objects in pictures, naming smells can take much longer and often leads to conflicting answers. This is despite our odour receptors having a more direct route to the brain than our other senses. Researchers attribute this gap to multiple factors, like the way our brains process smell information or how few smell-related words we regularly use.
Because of this disconnect between perception and ‘reality’, smell experiences may be inherently vague or ‘fuzzy’, making it hard to create distinct mental representations for smells, unlike sights or sounds. Anyone who pays attention to tasting notes, even those produced by experts, will have noticed the discrepancies that exist between the perceptions of two individuals. Therefore, proclaiming that a drink should taste only of specific flavours is a belief grounded only in naivety.
The mirage of flavour
One of the most crucial understandings about flavour is that it is perception i.e. the brain’s interpretation of external stimuli. Although we can dissect the chemical components of a drink, how we interpret them as flavour is dependent on many factors such as our genes, emotional state, environment, satiety, and even microbiome. Therefore, an absolute or ‘right’ interpretation of flavour does not exist.
The age old saying that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, holds true for flavour too. Flavour does not exist without perception. Molecules in their own right are not flavour. Some would suggest that the word flavour can also be used to describe the physical attributes of food or drink, but they can only be perceived once they meet our sensory processes. It’s only in the brain that our sensory signals are organised into something we experience as flavour. Which means that we each experience smells and tastes in ways that are unique to each and every one of us.
It should therefore now be apparent that dictating how a wine or a whisky will taste to others is misguided. Its flavour will be a subjective experience, and one that will differ depending on our physiological and emotional state on any given day. Projecting such absolutes of flavour does nothing to reduce the gap between expert and novice tasters. But it somewhat brings into question the topic of expertise.
What is a wine or whisky tasting expert?
As we have seen, flavour itself is a difficult sensation to conceptualise. Attempting to define expertise in such a realm is therefore like chasing a rainbow. In broad terms an expert may be deemed someone with extensive knowledge of the products and production processes. They may be experienced in tasting varied products and understand the agreed industry vocabulary for typical flavours. However, without screening or calibrating with training programmes such as FlavorActiv, expertise is a remarkably hazy area. Perhaps research can provide a more definitive answer to what separates a novice from an expert.
A study from New Zealand found that wine experts are better at recognising smells relevant to wine because they rely more on their sensory memory than on words to identify these aromas. This means that experts remember scents based on how they actually smell, rather than by naming them. Beginners, on the other hand, often focus on putting each smell into words as they learn, which can get in the way of accurately remembering the scents. This can in fact impede recognising aromas.
The results imply that while language helps categorise and identify odours, relying on it too heavily can disrupt memory for those odours. This effect, called ‘verbal overshadowing’, occurs when linguistic representation (like aniseed) replaces the actual sensory experience (the smell of aniseed). Experts are less affected by this, likely because they have more flexible perceptual and verbal skills, allowing them to switch seamlessly between sensory and verbal recall.
This is supported by a further study in which wine experts demonstrated better memory for wine odours than novices. But such expertise is category dependent. For example, while wine experts may be more proficient at identifying wine-related aromas, they are no more proficient at identifying non-wine related aromas such as those associated with coffee or chocolate. This indicates that being a proficient taster has much more to do with neurological processes than having a trained nose or palate.
However, it would seem that experts can better identify odours within mixtures of up to four components, indicating that expertise allows better differentiation of complex scents. A short olfactory training programme helped novices to recognise single odours nearly as well as sommeliers but didn’t significantly improve their performance with mixtures of two or more odours.
Perhaps then, the true distinction between expert tasters and novices lies in neurological variations. Brain imaging has revealed that sommeliers employ brain regions that enable them to process olfactory information faster. They also showed a dominance for left hemisphere activation, the side of the brain associated with analytical thinking. Whereas novices showed a more typical balance between both hemispheres, with the right hemisphere being associated with emotions and imagination.
Sensory education closes the gap
Everything we have discussed so far has been largely based on the ability to identify flavours and express them through vocabulary. In most people’s minds, this is the essence of what falsely sets experts and novices apart, acquiring terminology that is commonly agreed upon for tasting wine, whisky, or gin, for example. It’s the difference between waxing lyrical about a dram, and simply expressing that it tastes good. What’s missing from the conversation is how knowledge has the power break down the boundaries that flavour language creates, because as we have seen, the nose of an expert does not function any better than the nose of a novice.
Such knowledge empowers novices through simplifying and clarifying rather than complicating with pretence. Indeed, creating a smokescreen of complexity is a common tactic used to maintain a division between experts and novices. Sensory knowledge strips away the intimidating aspects of tasting wine and spirits and makes it more intuitive and rewarding.
Allow me to explain with some examples.
On average we each have a 30% variation in olfactory receptor genes. This means that our apparatus for detecting odour molecules is significantly variable between individuals. This makes the notion that any drink should ‘taste’ a certain way somewhat redundant.
The composition of proteins in your saliva is a factor that influences taste perception and preference. Variance in such proteins between individuals changes how things taste and smell. This is another indicator of why things taste different to each of us.
Orthonasal olfaction (sniffing) and retronasal olfaction (from food or drink in the mouth) have different functions and neurological pathways. This is why things can smell different to how they taste. As an example, smokiness in whisky cannot always be detected on the initial nose, a taste may be required to identify it.
Awareness of such insights is often absent from consumer tasting experiences, yet they have the potential to be game-changing. The simple understanding that we all experience flavours in different ways is one of the most liberating revelations that can be passed on by experience teams and ambassadors. It empowers individuals to truly express their interpretation of a drink free from the deeply engrained fear of sounding-like-an-amateur.
Sensory understanding such as this builds confidence and skill. People can gain self-assurance and refine their own perceptual experiences by learning to freely articulate flavours through a sensory approach that is both approachable and engaging. Flavour fans, whether it’s in wine, whisky, rum, beer, or gin, can tap into a deeper appreciation of flavour by demystifying sensory perception, resulting in more satisfying shared experiences.
Making flavour accessible
Making flavour appreciation accessible to all is our crusade at The Sensory Advantage. By training the trainers our goal is to enhance the experiences of others through sensory knowledge that has not been taught to those on the frontline of customer experiences previously. Yet it’s in all our interest.
Ambassador teams and sommeliers can take their knowledge to new levels of expertise to create the most memorable experiences for their guests. Enhanced experiences create the emotional connections that build brand loyalty. Brand loyalty builds trust and encourages people to explore flavour in an environment that’s free from the pressures of pretence and faux pas.
Everyone in the flavour industry has a duty to make flavour more accessible. We have a choice of whether to embrace knowledge and create a new narrative around sensory experience. Or embrace exclusivity and further drive a wedge between experts and newcomers to your brand. The choice is yours.