Original Post

Are you familiar with the cliché: beauty is in the eye of the beholder? When it comes to wine, beauty may lie in the aromatic and flavor perceptions of each wine lover. Much has been written about wine tasting, with a focus on the grapes, the appellation, the vintage, the winemaker, and the tasting technique itself. Given the many factors that go into crafting the finest wines, it’s easy to believe that you, as a wine consumer, are a mere passive observer of the flavors and aromas developed in wine as it ages. Think again.

Fruit-forward. Notes of dark cherry, red currant, and raspberry, plus hints of vanilla and baking spice.

Is this a description of your favorite Pinot Noir, or a holiday fruitcake? Have you ever wondered why your favorite wine reminds you of other scents derived from food morsels seldom found in your glass? Neuroscientific studies have shown that flavor is an active sense, in which your brain plays an integral role in creating the sight, smell, and taste you experience (Small, 2006). The intricacies of the combined biomechanic and brain mechanisms responsible for the taste of wine are only just being elucidated in the interdisciplinary field of neuroenology (“neuro” meaning brain, “enology” meaning the study of wine) (Shepherd, 2015).

As you watch the wine being poured into your stemmed glass, neurons, the cells that communicate messages within your brain, project to your visual cortex to create an image of the scene. Your recognition of this liquid activates brain regions responsible for memory, ushering your mental schema of wine to conscious thought. Perhaps you’re examining the hue or turbidity of the wine, forming notions of the flavor to come. A growing body of literature highlights that specific colors are associated with particular tastes, priming the palette before the wine reaches your tongue (Spence, 2015). As one neuroscientist puts it, “we eat first with our eyes” (Scalfani, 2013). Already, the tasting experience has begun.

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