A Dance to the Music of Wine

If you think tasting wine is fun, read the following instructions (from Wijnproeven voor beginner en gevorderde [Wine Tasting for Beginners and Advanced] by Robert Leenaers and Albert Holtzappel (2000)—silly title, by the way, it’s either or):

‘One tastes better with an empty stomach (…) a serious tasting should preferably start in the morning, before lunch. (…) Coffee before the tasting is not recommended. (…) Eating during the session is out of the question. (…) Bread is less dangerous due to its lighter taste, but remains undesirable.’

And on they go about the right place (kitchen), light (daylight), colours (white, walls too), odour (none whatsoever) and sound (talking is allowed during ‘designated moments’ only, no music, no other noises). Needless to say swallowing is prohibited and the spittoon should not contain sawdust (odour!).

Not an event to invite one’s friends to.

Some of these prohibitions are quite understandable. One cannot taste next to someone smoking a cigar or exuding whiffs of Chanel No. 5. Not to swallow the wine is good advice and not only because of that empty stomach. And people talking can be a nuisance (‘Have you tasted that red one, nr. 7, no, nr. 8, yet? Oh, you’re still doing the whites? Well, I thought this one to have way more tannins than the last one and that’s odd, as…’). One needs to concentrate.

Music not only undermines your ability to concentrate but also interferes with other sensory perceptions. It may even cause irritation and lead to a negative judgement, Leenaers and Holtzappel argue.

Prof. Adrian C. North goes one step further. In his ‘The Effect of Background Music on the Taste of Wine’ (2011, on which I stumbled via an article in the WSJ) he shows that students rated a wine more Zingy/Fresh while listening to Zingy/Fresh music and more Mellow/Soft if listening to Mellow/Soft music.

So a glass of Beaujolais Nouveau with Nirvana in my ears would taste like an oak-barrelled Australian monster, I guess. But would it to everyone? You may want to be careful if you think you have just found a way to upgrade your lesser-quality wines. According to North ‘music can only be an effective influence on perception to the extent that its communicative intent is understood by participants’. That means that an average, OK wine tasted to the sound of Byrd’s ‘Mass for Five Voices’ would be rated ‘rather dull’ by someone who is more into symphonic music and ‘subtle, refined’ by an admirer of so-called early music.

But then it is not just music that influences one’s appreciation of a wine. In March this year I was offered a Pinot Grigio with a Vitello Tonato (see my A Perfect Wine List). Though it paired all right with the Vitello, I thought not much of it. Last month I was poured the same wine. Same restaurant, same company, same ‘after a day of hard work’, but this time it was a gorgeous summer evening and we were sitting outside. The Pinot Grigio turned out to be an almost frivolous, zesty wine with a fresh-fruity nose.

Leenaers and Holtzappel do have a point—for the professional taster, that is.