Taste is a fickle thing

Posted by on 1 October 2011 | 0 Comments

Over the time since we opened our cellar door in 1997 it has been noticeable how much more experienced and confident people have become in their wine tasting. In the past, individuals in a group would often defer to one of their number who was perceived to have tasting expertise, whereas today many people will engage in insightful discussion about the wines they taste.

 

Occasionally we have instances which illustrate the fickle nature of “taste”, where perception trumps reality or where lack of confidence or experience leads to misunderstanding. A recent example was a customer who had purchased a case of wine and contacted us when they opened the first bottle because they thought it was different from the one they had tasted at the cellar door. They deduced from this that we had sold them a different vintage from the one they had tasted, which was not the case. These customers are reasonably experienced tasters of wine, but their mistake was based on a false assumption which resulted from different perceptions of the same wine on two different occasions.

 

A situation where a lack of experience caused an issue occurred recently when a customer returned two different wines she had bought at the cellar door just a few days previously. We tasted them and both were perfectly sound – apart from a little oxidation which had occurred in the two days since they were opened. The bottles had been opened in the company of similarly inexperienced tasters. It seems they all decided that both wines (incidentally both very popular) were not to their liking. Our customer’s perception had been influenced by the opinions of others. On this basis she thought her purchases should be refunded, despite freely acknowledging that she enjoyed them at the cellar door tasting a few days earlier!

 

These examples illustrate how intensely subjective is our experience and our memory of taste, how our perceptions can vary at different times and how suggestible we are in matters of wine tasting. This is due in large part to the fact that our sense of taste is an imprecise instrument, combined with the confounding effects of a whole range of circumstances, for example the time of day the tasting occurs, what we were eating at the time or how recently we last ate, our mood, our alertness, the company we are in (and their opinions), the location, the nature of the occasion etc.

 

Misunderstandings like these are infrequent, but they raise for us the possibility that other people have these sorts of experiences and just bottle them up (excuse the pun). So if you have an issue with a wine you have purchased at a cellar door it is good to give the winemaker the opportunity to respond. Equally, it is always great to hear about a bottle you have particularly enjoyed!