Being aware of the neurology that dictates how we taste and smell can teach us how to sharpen our wine-tasting senses
Written by sommelier and Bordeaux tutor Regina Daigneault
DO you wonder how winemakers and sommeliers come up with tasting notes? Are those aromas that are defined in their tasting notes truly there in the wine? If so, how did they get there and why don’t you smell them? Let’s get nosy (pun intended) and investigate this subject deeper.
The Science Behind Smelling
When you put a glass of wine up to your nose and sniff, we call this ‘direct smelling.’ Airborne molecules from the wine travel up your nasal passage to your olfactory bulb that has neurons linked to your limbic system—essentially your brain. The research on how we smell indicates several interesting facts. I will list them out to help organize them.
We are all different when it comes to defining aromas, but especially in food and wine. This is due to several factors:
1. Our age and biology will impact how we smell, if our olfactory bulb is in good health and we haven’t numbed it or injured it with drugs (whether legal or illegal), flu, colds and viruses, or injury from sports or worse yet, a fight, then we can count on its ability to detect aromas. But this is only a small part of the formula. (Keeping your nose in good health will help your olfactory bulb stay healthy, and in turn enable you to smell more efficiently.)
2. Our cultural foundations greatly impact how we smell and what we’ve smelled in childhood as neurons were building. These neurological connections will influence your ability to detect and define aromas. It’s interesting to note that smell is tied to memory and emotion. When we experience something as children, those memories carry aromatic signatures that are either pleasant or unpleasant. That’s why grandmother’s blackberry jam might be imbedded in your limbic system forever as the most pleasant smell and memory. Or that hangover from rum as a teenager will leave you never drinking rum again!
3. Experiences in life and your openness to trying new foods and wines will enhance and stretch your library of aromas. Most Americans love sweet, that’s because there is some form of sugar in a lot of processed foods and beverages. Italians love bitter, and they create a beverage called Amaro, which literally translates as bitter. So culturally your DNA carries some of these messages; and if you don’t continually try new foods and wines, you may limit your ability to increase your sense of smell.
4. We have named everything to help us define aromas. For example, if you smell lavender as you enter a room then you may note it as lavender and be done with it. But lavender has a multitude of aromas imbedded within it, and all the different varieties of lavender will smell distinctly unique. Plus, lavender changes as it ages or dries out. Lavender has floral, peppery, herbal, menthol and earthy aromas that are all expressed in every stage of maturity. Some categories are more intense or less distinct, but most varieties will show an array of aromas.
How Do We Improve Our Sense of Smell?
Getting back to wine, the key here is to practice improving that amazing sense of smell by SMELLING EVERYTHING. Just start sniffing all the most wonderful and not so fabulous items that you can find. And be sure to not limit smelling to just flowers, herbs, spices, fruits and vegetables, but it is also important to define what you are smelling by listing the individual aromas within each item. Personally, I even like smelling the funky aromas too. When my kids were young I’d pull off their socks and sniff their feet! I loved the sweet funky odor of the sweat. Weird sounding, I know, but this really enhances one’s aroma library and ignites the neurons that will get filed in your library of aromas, plus there’s a bunch of fun memories that you can build as well.
The Science Behind Tasting
Taste is a bit more complicated. This is mostly due to sensations that arise from food and wine, in addition to aromas that are detected on the palate. When you think that you’re tasting food or wine, you are actually smelling it. This happens once the wine or food is swallowed, as those same molecules that you smelled are also traveling up through the back of your throat. The wine or food that you swallowed is interpreted a second time from your palate. The second important factor is the sensations that you experience on your tongue where your taste buds are located. And the amount of taste buds will impact your tolerance to certain foods. More taste buds will generally mean that you are highly sensitive.
The Five Tastes
Sweet, salty, bitter, sour and umami (also called savory) are the five categories of taste. Our taste buds have receptors that trigger nerve impulses which travel to your brain. These categories vary in each of us and impact how we enjoy or are repulsed by food and wine. If you don’t enjoy bitter flavors, it may mean that you are sensitive to astringency. Red wines can have varying levels of astringency, depending on the tannins in the wine. Tannins come from grape skins, stems and seeds and also contain bitter components.
Here is another complication: the amount of sweetness, sour, salty, bitter or umami that we enjoy will also impact how we notice those tastes. If we consume a lot of sweet foods, our threshold for sweetness is greater, meaning that it takes more sweetness for us to notice it in food or wine. Conversely, if we drink a lot of highly tannic wines, we numb our palate and desensitize it to astringency.
In Conclusion
This is not the end of the story; it’s only the beginning and a wonderful way to build your foundations for food and wine pairing. Once you understand that smell and taste are intertwined, you can learn to build a library of aromas, stretch your palate and your ability to smell and taste, and best of all combine food and wine in a most magical way. It’s not just about enhancing your meal, but your life too!