Words on Wines / flavour
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October 12, 2018
Wine for Everyman - Rethinking the fundamentals of Wine
We all eat, drink, smell perfumes and know the experience of bitterness yet there is still mystery about the operation of these senses. The ‘simple’ act of enjoying a glass of wine is really a complex physiological one and also has personal and social overtones. Observe how people can have difficulty sharing their experience of a wine, whether it is uncertainty over what they are feeling or trying to find the ‘right’ words.
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January 08, 2014
How to Enjoy Wine
Wine was regarded in Ancient Greece as a gift from the Gods, one of life’s great pleasures. The exciting world of wine can be opened to you too, if you know a few of the basics. Firstly, wine is a beverage that is mainly water, with 12 – 15% alcohol (which is sweet), food acid (sour), red tannins (which are bitter) and many flavour compounds in micro amounts; as you would expect from a fermented fruit juice.
Secondly, it is important to know how your eating system works.
There are two competing senses involved – the mouth/tongue and the nose.
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January 08, 2014
A Theory on the Balance between Flavour and Mouthfeel in Wine
Even wine professionals use the word “palate” for taste and mistakenly interpret that to mean only its mouthfeel, whilst contrariwise foodies have a habit of regarding anything that goes into the mouth as having “flavour”. Each is half right.
Taking wine as an example, we appreciate the aroma in the glass and then we place it in the mouth where the water soluble part (extract) interacts with the lining to give varying impressions of sweetness, acidity, bitterness, warmth etc. and the volatile part wafts away and is drawn up as you breathe out, past the nasal sensors.Hence there are two almost concurrent sensory experiences but people appear to talk and write as if it is one.
