Neuroscience research is showing us that there is substantial “bleed over” between sensory sections of our brains.  Each sense is far from walled off from other senses or from other functions such as emotion.  Senses can affect each other and other brain functions. For instance, some people can see music or hear red.

Without getting technical here, there is decent research that supports what many people already observed; taste can be affected by other environmental factors such as color, experience, product, interior, and architectural design, producer reputation, taster experience and attitudes, fashion, culture, third party validation (judges, ratings), and price.  The various alternatives or factors with just this list yields billions of different combinations that can and often do affect taste.  Extensive training and experience can reduce their influence but can’t change the fact that our brains are hardwired without much insulation from other functions.

I believe that there is plenty of evidence that individual opinions of taste are meaningless for anyone else.   Can say eight judges do a decent job of validating taste for consumers?  Sure, but only if the tasters are in a similar context (rare).  If the judges are in a sterile air conditioned hotel conference room is that applicable to a taster in an intimate setting with a friend outdoors at a picnic?

The answer is no, no way, nada, nyet, non, and so forth.

I’ve never cared about what Parker, Wine Spectator, or the others have rated and reviewed.  I’ve long realized that unless you are in the judges entire context, not just the room, their ratings are meaningless except as some kind of placebo (which does work).  The current rating systems are just bull shit.

How does this affect wineries and tasters?

I see an incredible opportunity for wineries to influence taste with the experience they create in their tasting rooms.  On the flip side the tasters can enhance their taste experience by seeking environments that make the wine taste better to them.  In other words, taste preferences can be constructed largely by the participants and their interaction with each other and the tasting environment.

Lots of people already know that subconsciously so this is no surprise.  However, architects, interior designers, landscapers, and tasting room staff are rarely aware of how to specifically design for enhanced taste.  They may stumble into this effect but it would be best if the tasting environment was carefully enhanced to support taste optimization.

Katya and I are researching this topic at home.  We use color, form, line, texture, lighting, and other design elements to affect our experience and taste.  We find that almost every wine tastes great in our carefully constructed California wine country environment.  We have not found a research method to show this scientifically so our opinion, while informed, is quite subjective.   Our Intiri Designs project has products that are the result of this and other research.

- jim

The American Association of Wine Economists met for their 2nd annual conference in Portland, Oregon on August 14-16, 2008.  For the full article in Wine and Vines, the industry news Web site, please visit their Article about the conference. A quick summary of why this read is worth your time!

• Wine Spectator sting!  Two economists set up a fake restaurant in Italy, only a Web site, no actual restaurant, and submitted their wine list to the Wine Spectator for an award of excellence.  The list included wines that WS has rated poorly in the past.  For their $250 application fee they got their award of excellence along with 21 other Italian restaurants.  So would you trust WS???
• The same wine is judged differently at different competitions. If there are actually some kind of standardized criteria for wine taste, which would be the only way to actually compete on taste, then why a gold at one competition and no rating at another?
• Winemaker’s reputations elevate the perceived value of wines even if the winemaker had nothing to do with the wine.

At Wine Questers we feel that the intrinsic value of wine, not the price necessarily, has much more to do with the consumer’s value of the tasting experience than what judges decide or how wineries price their products.

We believe that when wineries compete on the total experience it is less expensive marketing for the winery and brings greater consumer satisfaction.  The existing system of magazine ratings and competition is mostly a fraud and offers little value to consumers.

- jim

Over many decades of wine tasting I’ve carefully observed that the tasting room experience is far more valued than the taste of the wine.  The right tasting room staff can turn a sweet white wine taster into a cab sav taster in less than a hour.

During my ethnographic research of tasters in tasting rooms I tried to bring some science to my observations.  I am no longer a believer in focus groups and surveys.  The best understanding of people can come from careful observation of the subjects in their environment.

My hypothesis is supported by my observations:

The overwhelming value of the tasting room visit, and the value of the wine that tasters purchase, is created by the taster’s experience in the tasting room and what that means to them.  The wine is just something to talk about.

So how do you create meaning in a winery experience?  This will be covered in the future but please add your thoughts in the forum for wine tasting experiences and ambiance.

- jim

During 2006 Katya and I visited dozens of tasting rooms and did ethnographic research while tasting.  We wanted to blend into the environment and observe people’s habits, preferences, and activities.  We paid no attention to their wine preferences, only how they react to their experiences.

Our purpose was for product design inspiration.  We are unhappy with the residential interior products available for our lifestyle design preferences.  We are developing Intiri Designs to design and sell lifestyle residential products, focusing first on California Wine Country.

The ethnographic research results are confidential but that is when we realized that the experience of a wine tasting road trip is more important than the wine for something like 80% of the visitors to tasting rooms.   The concept behind Wine Questers developed during 2007 as we evaluated winery picnic sites and designed our California Wine Country table setting collection.

Ethnographic study is more commonly known as anthropoligists living with remote tribes and learning about them by integrating into their culture.  However, the same techniques work for market research and product design.  We observe then create hypotheses, test the hypotheses with conversations and further observations, and then use the results to influence our designs.

The objective of the research is to understand the lifestyle, design, and style preferences of tasters so we can create products that give them the opportunity to create their own wine country lifestyle at home.  We are a long way from knowing if we are succeeding, but at least this project is interesting.

- jim