There’s nothing worse that sitting at a wine tasting listening to everyone around you enthusing about tasting apples when all you can taste is… well… wine! Is being able to taste all these flavours the sign of a real wine expert, or something that one can learn?
A recent article in The Telegraph (19th September 2015) reported on a controversial new study that stated that the taste of wine varies greatly, depending on the size of the sip taken.
The article stated:
“While taking a small slurp can produce grassy, woody and even almond flavours in a white wine, a larger gulp can transform it into a blast of citrus and flowers.”
According to the scientists behind the research, this is because wine releases different quantities of chemicals, known as volatiles, in the mouth depending on the volume of liquid tipped in. These chemicals influence the way it tastes.
We all know that the smell of wine is important and it does, indeed, influence the way we experience the taste of wine. However, the researchers found that human saliva fundamentally changes the way volatiles are released from wine, producing quite different flavours in our mouths than we would expect from smelling the wine. This explains why, sometimes, we smell something very different from the eventual taste.
As you would expect, this research has caused a stir within the wine community. Many commentators have suggested that it will change the way wine tasting is conducted in the future.
However, Victoria Moore, the Telegraph’s wine critic, made a valid point when she said that it would be very hard for drinkers to accurately regulate the amount they took with each sip for it to make any meaningful difference.
“Everything we do changes the way we taste the wine, whether it’s the type of glass we use to the amount we pour into the glass. But sniffing remains one of the most important ways we detect flavours,” she said, adding:
“It’s hard enough to persuade people not to fill their glasses to the top because you lose the aroma of the wine which produces so much of the taste, never mind them remembering to alter the size of their sips.”
But what impact does (or should) this have on your glass of wine at home? Day-to-day, probably very little. However, this study suggests that you could enjoy far more sensory pleasure from your glass of wine simply by varying the size of your sips.
The researchers recommend small sips to taste baked apple, apple pie and floral flavours associated with Chardonnay, Semillon, and Sauvignon Blanc, while larger sips detect the flavour of berries, cherries, grapefruit and honey.
We’d be interested to hear your views on this, and the flavours you can taste in Domaine du Grand Mayne wines, depending on how you taste them.
Full details of the research can be read here.