Aromatherapy: The Truth about Taste
Enter the complex world of describing wine
If you and I ― and 10 other people ― all had a glass of the same wine in the same place at the same time, chances are we’d generate a dozen different ideas about what the wine tasted like. Moreover, some in the group would probably say they detected only a handful of characteristics, while others might reel off a long list of evocative adjectives. What’s going on here? When it comes to wine, why is taste so hard to pin down and seemingly so different for each of us? (One sad outcome of this conundrum is that wine tasting and evaluating intimidate some of us ― especially when we find it hard to describe what we taste.)
There’s no quick answer. What we refer to simply as “taste” is really an intricate phenomenon involving multiple mechanisms in the mouth and brain. Scientists have discovered that our sensitivity to taste is in fact based on our DNA; some people actually do have the capacity to experience flavors more intensely than others. And a leading taste researcher at Yale University has demonstrated that for women, intensity of taste varies with hormonal cycles. All this complexity notwithstanding, research and experience also suggest that there are simple ways in which you can maximize the flavor of any wine you drink.