How to Improve Your Ability to
Identify Wine Aromas
A survey of adults
from all walks of life and cultures would almost certainly reveal
that some odours evoke vivid memories of past experiences. Often,
long forgotten early childhood experiences come flooding back
decades after the odour was first experienced. Similarly unusual
wine aromas often awaken clear memories and past associations
between places, events and people.
Despite this conventional
wisdom, human beings do find it particularly difficult to recall
odours even compared with visual cues, such as faces. The ability to
identify odours in the short and long term has been extensively
studied by psychologists, who have found some interesting results.
Odour Identification
One important wine-tasting skill is the ability to recognise and
provide accurate words to describe the odours and flavours that are
encountered. Wine descriptions that contain phrases such as
"intensely blackcurrant and capsicum like, with smoky oak" evoke a
clear sensory picture of the wine compared with (say) "herbaceous
with other complexing characters". Both are descriptions of the same
wine, but the former is a better description as it communicates much
more about the wine that the latter. The ability to produce detailed
descriptions of the wine's aroma, depends on our ability to perceive
the odour, to recognise what it is, and lastly to put a meaningful
label on it.
Much effort has been focused on our perceptive abilities, but in
reality, being very sensitive to wine components is no guarantee of
being a good wine evaluator. Early scientific studies implied that
even with considerable experience and practice, people could
identify only between about one and two dozen odours at a time
without error. More recently this estimate has been upwardly
revised, the exact number depending on both how much practice one
obtains in consciously adding odours to ones repertoire, and on how
distinct the aromas are. For example it is more difficult to
correctly recall odours that are similar such as raspberry and
strawberry compared to odours that are very individual such as
rubber.
The belief that frequently encountered 'everyday life' aromas are
more easily identified than others is true, however when presented
with these everyday aromas, people can usually precisely name only
about half of them. How many times when tasting wines have you been
frustrated by knowing what an odour is but being unable to find an
appropriate verbal descriptor for it. This has become known as "the
tip of the nose phenomenon" and is known to afflict all of us at
some time!
Improving Your Ability to Identify Wine Aromas
So how can we improve our ability to label aromas and flavours? It
is becoming increasingly recognised that the likely cause of the
"tip of the nose" syndrome is the weak connection between odour
perception and language. Researchers have found that when a person
is asked to identify common odours, the chance of success is 40-50%.
If the person identifies the odour with its true name the first time
it is presented, then he/she will stand about a 80-90% chance of
identification on a subsequent occasion. If the person identifies
the aroma with a reasonably good approximation (i.e. strawberry for
raspberry) then she/he will stand only about a 60% chance of
success. Very incorrect labels have little chance of being applied
consistently. So what is the bottom line? Only the use of verbal
labels meaningful to the taster, learned over a long period of time
will serve the taster well. Unfortunately there are no
short-cuts. Rapid learning of new or arbitrary names for odours does
not occur. Practically what this means is that you need to regularly
taste as many wines as possible in the company of others who are
used to stating their perceptions in either words or in writing.
The other key to success is always putting your own perceptions in
words. Odour learning occurs pretty well every day in our lives.
However it usually occurs incidentally with no conscious attempts
being made to add odours to our memory. As a result most people find
recalling the names of odours when they need to, very difficult.
Wherever possible, write down what you see in the wine. By
writing down what you see and listening to feed-back from others,
your ability to identify odours will improve!
Odour Memory
In a practical wine tasting sense, it is our long term rather than
short term memory for odours that is of importance. We tend to use
previous tasting experience obtained weeks or months previously to
assist our current tasting efforts. Research has shown that our long
term memory for odours is excellent. Once remembered, odours are
difficult to forget. One study for example found that people who
averaged an identification success rate of 67% on their first test,
remembered on average 65% of the odours after one year. In contrast
it was found that the same panelists struggled to recall visual
scenes over the same period. Making a conscious effort to put labels
on odours has other advantages. It appears that odours that are
either identified verbally or are related to a life episode are
remembered better than those that are not. It also appears that the
more concise and accurate the label the better the odour is
remembered.
Are Any Groups Superior in
Odour Identification?
In short the answer is yes. Females display a general
superiority over males in identifying odours. This superiority even
extends to odours that are considered part of the male domain, such
as cigars, beer, and machine oil. Fortunately for the males amongst
us, the disadvantage can be overcome by following the steps outlined
above. Whilst the reasons for this are unclear, it has been widely
suggested that the better recognition ability is not due to superior
discriminative ability, but probably from a generally superior
verbal ability. Recent research points to differences in the
functional organisation of the brain for language as the likely
cause of the better recognition ability on the part of females.
Interestingly when sighted persons are compared to non-sighted
persons, neither group has been shown to have an advantage in aroma
identification. This same study found that specialised training,
including associating odours to verbal labels resulted in improved
identification performance on the part of both groups. This result
further supports the notion that even repeated long term incidental
exposure to odours does not necessarily improve ones ability to
identify and label odours and flavours. Like all things in life, we
must work on it if we are to improve.
Richard Gawel
References
Cain, W.S. (1982) Odor identification by males and females:
Prediction versus performance. Chemical Senses 7(2), pp1-12
Cain, W.S. (1979) To know with the nose: Keys to odor
identification. Science 203, pp467-469
Richards, J. T. E., Zucco, G. M. (1989) Cognition and olfaction: A
review. Psychological Bulletin, pp352-360
Smith, R.S., Doty, R.L., Burlingame, G. K., McKeown, D. A. (1993)
Smell and taste function in the visually impaired. Perception and
Psychophysics 54(5), pp649-655
|
