Neuroscience

This article is the first of an upcoming series by French neuroscientist Gabriel Lepousez. Gabriel is part of the Scientific Committee formed by WSG in the context of its "Architecture of Taste Research Project". He has also presented a fascinating segment on "The Neuroscience of Wine Tasting" as part of The Science of Wine Tasting Webinar Series which will resume with new episodes in the Spring of 2022. The wine tasting paradox There is a real paradox in the experience of tasting a product like wine. Tasting is such a familiar, instinctive, and seemingly obvious act; something that we take for granted. At the same time, wine is a one of the most complex sensory objects that we put into our mouths. Indeed, wine is one of the rare sensory objects of our daily life which solicits all at the same time:

Sommeliers’ brains seem to fascinate scientists. Every few years, a new study pops up where somms are subjected to MRI scans whilst they blind taste and pontificate.

The Wine Scholar Guild (WSG) has initiated an ambitious undertaking aimed at developing a new way to assess wine: the Architecture of Taste Research Project (ATRP) The Architecture of Taste Research Project aspires to find a way to empower the individual to taste and describe wine with an enriched and universal lexicon that not only dives deeper into assessing the qualities of a wine’s building blocks but also into the nature of a wine’s personality and, where relevant, its corresponding terroir signature. Just as significantly, the research project aims to develop a new set of assessment criteria that uses the body’s own reflexive reactions as a tuning fork to capture a wine’s inherent signal—a message that incorporates not only sensory perceptions but also perceived energy, the emotions it triggers and evocative elements that, once again, might link a wine to “place.”

On April 13, WSG members, alumni and school network had the chance to discover WSG Tasting Lab®. This revolutionary way of tasting wine uses two distinct tasting grids and a lexicon created by WSG and wine industry experts that focus on a wine’s mouthfeel, texture and shape and how these elements might relate to the wines’ terroir signature. The following two wines were tasted during this exciting webinar: Domaine Marcel Deiss Grasberg 2016 Domaine Marcel