Wine Tasting & Your Sense of Smell

We have been approached by a wonderful Wine company, who would like to do a Wine Tasting & Your Sense of Smell event…

It may not be something we automatically think about in this way, but although each sense has it’s own receptor organs, smell and taste belong to our chemical sensing system – known as chemosensation.

Our sense of smell is our oldest sense detecting chemicals that relate to smell or taste, it provides us with the information we need to survive in the environment that surrounds us.

The sensation of taste includes five established basic tastes: sweetness, sourness, saltiness, bitterness, and savoury or Umami.

The majority of flavors are recognised through the sense of smell. Many of us have at sometime experienced how food looses it’s flavour when we have a head cold or a blocked nose.

Even though you can distinguish a foods sweetness or bitterness, if you hold your nose while eating chocolate, you will have trouble identifying which particular flavour of chocolate it is.

Why is this you may ask?

Well the reason for this is that the flavor of chocolate is sensed largely by our sense of smell, this is also the case with Coffee. So if you wish to fully experience or savour a wonderful flavor, then it really is a case of the ‘Nose knows You Know’.

This leads us perfectly into why having a Wine Tasting & Your Sense of Smell event, makes perfect sense.

Anyone who has ever had the opportunity to visit a winery, a vineyard or even watched a televised program about wine. Will have seen that before ever attempting to take a sip of wine.. the experts will evaluate the wine by employing four basic steps – looking, swirling, smelling, and last but not least tasting.

You do not have to be a true wine expert, also known as a Sommelier or Wine steward, to enjoy or savour the moment. These tried and tested rituals of wine tasting have been developed over millennia.

The iconic Marilyn Monroe once said – “There are no Women who do not like perfume, there are women who have not found their scent” –

Now that started us wondering – if this could also be applied to Wine?, although it would not only apply to Women………..

As in:

“There is no one who does not like wine, there are just people who have not found their vintage yet” – Huib Maat

Our nostrils are ‘Ipsilateral’(which means ‘on or affecting the same side of the body’) – this allows us to smell two odours simultaneously, it also means that you could in theory smell a Red wine with your right nostril and a White with your left, with the information being send to the corresponding side of the brain !!!