Tag Archive for 'subjectivity'

More on tasting note subjectivity

Published on October 23, 2012 in Tasting and taste. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

Take a look at this Scientific American blog post by Christina Agapakis.   

In summary, it shows how people perceive smells differently dependent on genetic makeup, age, gender, health, and other factors. They have different sensitivitie to the smell of particular substances, different ways of describing them, and differ in how attractive they find them.  Watch the short video in the blog post. If you have a scientific bent, chase through the links and read the original research article. If you want you can even reanalyse the same data, which is provided in spreadsheet form.

I really don’t understand how anyone can think that any honest tasting note is anything other than totally subjective.

Order effects, and linguistic fluency

Published on October 7, 2012 in Tasting and taste. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

I thought that subject line would get your attention :)

In you have an hour or so to spare, take a look at this lecture by Antonia Mantonakis entitled “Does a wine’s name influence consumer taste perception?”  It also covers other influences on taste perception that have nothing to do with the wine itself.

So, to my list of factors that explain why wine tastes the way it does, it seems we can add the following two:

  1. Order effects
    I mentioned in my earlier list that the previous wine tasted affects how the current one is perceived, but Antonia found more general order effects.  In short sequences of  up to 3 wines, consumers show a preference for the first one.    But for longer sequences, up to 5 wines, the last one is preferred.   This research is briefly referred to in the video, but I could not find a publicly accessible research article to link to.
  2. Linguistic fluency
    Two winery names were made up, one of which was easier to pronounce than the other, but in other respects they were the same. In contrast to how linguistic fluency (ease of reading and pronunciation) affects perception of more basic consumer goods, it was found that a wine associated with the less fluent name tasted better.   More details in the video and this article.  I am sure I have heard it said many times that wines with simple names have an advantage in the market, but maybe that idea came about by the invalid extension of results from other product categories.

I’d like to emphasise that these results refer to reported perceptions.  There is admittedly the issue of whether people say what they really think about a wine, or say what they think they should be saying.  It might even vary from experiment to experiment, but MR scan evidence and a clever experimental design suggest that people at least sometimes say what they really think they perceive.

The final thing I would like to comment on is perhaps the most surprising, at least for those who fancy themselves as wine experts. The subjects in the experiments mentioned in the two points listed above were divided into two categories: those who knew more about wine, and those who knew less. Guess which group was more influenced by the order and linguistic fluency. It was the more knowledgable one!

Links on biodynamics and wine-ratings

Published on December 14, 2011 in General and Tasting and taste. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Just wanted to share a few links I came across recently on the UK Wine Forum.  They are not new articles, but I found them interesting.  If you are a regular reader of my blog, you will probably find them interesting too, as they cover topics I tend to bang on about, and they support my arguments and views.  But if you are not a regular reader, you could find them as irritating as my blog :)

Firstly there is a set of three articles about biodynamics, all of which take a pretty sceptical view.  The first is On Fertile Ground? Objections to Biodynamics, which is a 2006 article from The World of Fine Wine, written by  Jesús Barquín and Douglass Smith.  It is a well-argued and balanced piece, very much in the ponderous style of the magazine.  The second is by the same authors: Biodynamics in the Wine Bottle.  Here they take their gloves off, and get more stuck into a critique of Steiner’s ideas.  Neither does Voodoo on the Vine, by Joe Eskenazi, pull any punches.  These articles, particularly the last two, lay themselves open to the criticism that they are using ridicule as an argument.  But I do not think that is fair – the wacky ideas they mention are not at all taken out of context – dip anywhere into Steiner’s work and wackyness is pretty much all you will find.  I particularly liked the concluding paragraphs of Biodynamics in the Wine Bottle, in which the harm of biodymanics is discussed.  The authors write: Apart from being a waste of time money and effort,

The problem resides in the extension of disbelief in empirical technique, and in substituting for it beliefs in unscientific practices like astrology and homeopathy, as well as voodoo-style rituals and even “geo-acupuncture.”  We must confront this problem, not just as wine lovers and wine writers, but also as citizens who do not wish to live in, nor present to our children, a society in which pseudoscience and esoteric fantasies are considered reality.

The final article I’d like to draw your attention to is A Hint of Hype, A Taste of Illusion, by Leonard Mlodinow.  The strong message I am getting here is not to take anyone’s opinions on a wine too seriously, however expert that person is supposed to be, and even if that person is oneself.  But that does not mean that having a views on a wine is a snobbish affectation, which is perhaps a conclusion many would draw.  Let’s just accept that people’s views on wine differ, and are subject to all sorts of influences.