When it comes to sensory work by scientists, ins studies they are looking to get statistical data on the wines being tasted, they are much more rigorous in their approach than most wine professionals looking to criticise or assess wine. For example, a study might have compared vineyard treatments, and then to assess wine quality they could do microvinifications of the different plots in the experiment. They are looking for statistically significant differences between young wines that might be quite close in character.
For a start, they limit the number of samples tasted in any one session. And they give their sensory panelists gaps between each wine, where they rinse their mouths and allow their palates to reset. What is known as carry-over is a real thing: the previous wine can influence the perception of the next wine. For this reason tasting order is randomised – this is something that many competitions try to account for, for example by having panellists each taste in a different order.
It’s because of the rather imprecise nature of sensory perception that we need such approaches. We are not measuring devices giving a read-out based on what is there. Instead, we model the world around us, and our perceptions are multisensory. A lot of processing goes on in the background before we are consciously aware of the world around us.
When I taste a wine, I like to think that the vast experience gained from tasting thousands of wines a year in all sorts of different settings, and including wines from all the wine growing regions of the world (most of which I’ve visited), means that my perceptions have a solid base to them, and I can make sense of the wine in front of me. Many professionals would say the same. But, at the same time, I’m aware that some of my assessments are more accurate than others. Sometimes, I feel I’m really getting the wine; other times, it feels like I’m straining a bit to try to get closer to understanding what I’m tasting. One day I taste with clarity; another day it seems much harder.
It would be really helpful to test my palate in order to confirm this hunch I have, but this is hard to do.
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