Bob's Blog #14 We Smell Wine with our Tongue! We Taste Wine with our Nose!

Yes, that is true, kinda, more or less.

Every now and then I am compelled, as a requirement of our articles of incorporation, to write something technical or educational. I know that most of you are thinking “oh no, not again”. On the other hand, so many of you are relatively new to our group you probably haven’t had to suffer through reading my blogs or extended emails as it’s been a long time since I was so motivated to take the time to do that key component of my job as President. 

As this is a very short read, you should at least keep this blog page open for three minutes. That way I’ll falsely be led to believe that you read my blog.

 Ever wonder why folks that just “drink” wine typically have a different experience from those folks that taste and savor the taste of wine. It’s simple. It’s all in that gray matter that we call a brain. I must seriously savor the taste of wine. When I drink a glass of wine in the evening it can take me two or more hours to finish it. It’s like I’m slowly savoring every sip. Or, on the other hand, it could be because I’m so engrossed in other things I forget about the wine.  As we all know, tasting wine is a focused, sensory process of examining and evaluating the wine's various attributes like its aroma, flavor, acidity, and texture. Oh yeah, as if we really cared about acidity and texture. For those folks that just drink wine and don’t go through the whole swirl and smell ordeal they are leaving out a key component of what makes some wines taste much better than others. It’s all in the smell.  Information to our brain about smells skips the thalamus and goes straight to the cortex.  Huh! If you want to know about thalamus functions versus cortex functions, I cover it very briefly at the end of this less than lucid diatribe about our nose. If we take time to smell the wine this gives odors in the wine a more direct access to higher-level processing areas in the brain. Of course we are not all created equal in this regard. Just as we do not all have the same IQ, we do not all have the same ability to process smells and as we all know, taste is directly linked to our ability to smell. Smell contributes the majority of what we perceive as a wine’s flavor/taste. It does so by working with the basic tastes detected by the tongue to create a complete sensory experience. If you skip the part of the swirl and sniff process not all is lost. 

I apparently contradict myself, didn’t I? Did you know that your mouth can detect smells? Human taste cells contain functional olfactory receptors which are responsible for detecting odors. These receptors interact with taste cells on the tongue, allowing for the perception of the sense of smell for odors that come from inside your mouth. Basically, aromas from the wine travel from the mouth up to the nose. This interaction is a key part of how we experience the flavor of wine. As I said, much of what we perceive as taste actually comes from smell. It also comes from our mouths ability to smell. So, when we hold the wine on our tongue for a short while before swallowing, we are also smelling it. Next time you drink wine stop and think what your brain is doing.

Now for science. Hmmm, yeah, the previous stuff kinda bordered on science. Anyway, the thalamus functions as a central information hub (kinda like a router but more like an information dispatcher). It acts as a relay station for most sensory input (except smell) to the cerebral cortex. The cerebral cortex is our central processor. Ya know, part of our mainframe computer called the “brain”. It, among other things, processes all our sensory systems. So, if you think about it, if your CPU doesn’t process correctly your consumption of a fine wine, you might as well drink Bud light beer.

Above I mentioned IQ. Did you know that people with lower IQs tended to rate sweet and bitter solutions as more intense than those folks with a high IQ? If that’s the case I must be as dumb as a rock. So, at our next V&WS gathering in which we evaluate wine I suggest that you don’t make statements like, this wine has an intense bitter taste, or this wine is very sweet. Go with I detect a hint of bitterness or, this wine is a little on the sweet side. Okay, as I don't want to offend anyone and I don't want Wendy getting upset with me I should point out that I'm referring to IQs in the normal range to the Hawking range.

By the way, our brains are mostly white, not gray.

So, this took me at least two hours to write and it probably took you less than four minutes to read. But did you read it? I’ll ask Wendy if she read it.