Taste versus Flavor

It turns out taste and flavor are pretty complicated. What we think of as the taste or flavor of a food or wine is a combination of pure ‘taste’ sensations derived from the taste buds on the tongue PLUS the smells, the look and mouthfeel or texture. For the purposes of describing wine, it seems to be most common to use the term ‘taste’ to mean the basic tastes outlined below, reserving the word flavor for the complete sensation the wine leaves on you which includes all of the senses, not just your tongue.

This post will go through the Basic Tastes.

Basic Tastes: Sweet, Salty, Sour, Bitter, Umami, Kokumi?

You’ve no doubt heard of the 1st 4. The 5th one was new to me, and it has also been suggested that there may be another one called Kokumi.

Here are some interesting notes for each type of Basic Taste.

Sweet. Sugar doesn’t smell. You can only taste it. When placed on their tongues, it makes babies smile while they are still in the womb. This is a big deal in wine. All wines have some sugar, even the very dry wines. In order for most people to detect a sweet taste though, you must have .5% (5 grams per liter) of residual sugar (remaining sugar after fermentation). Wines are described as bone dry, very dry, dry, off-dry (or semi-dry), semi-sweet, sweet and very sweet. It has become trendy in the United states for consumers to claim: “I only like dry wines”. Of course, what one person describes as dry, may actually be semi-sweet. There is no shame in liking sweeter wines.

Salt. This one rarely, if ever, shows up in wines. Some sherry wines taste a bit salty and it isn’t clear if the salt comes from the sea where the grapes are grown, or if it has something to do with the sherry wine making process. For the most part though salt doesn’t really apply to wine tasting.

Sour. This is caused by acid, and is what makes us pucker. Lemons, vinegar and cream of tarter are all sour, but from different types of acid. Like sweetness, acid plays a huge role in how a wine is perceived by the human taster. And, sweet and sour play off each other to create what wine tasters refer to as a balanced wine.

Bitter. Many things in nature that taste bitter are also poisonous. Likely because evolution, it takes a very small percentage of a bitter substance in a food to make it taste bitter. In other words, your bitter taste buds are very sensitive. Foods that taste bitter are coffee, endive, citrus peel, and tonic water. Babies hate bitter, and many bitter foods are an acquired taste. Bitter plays a role in wine, especially red wines that sit in the skins. They are both bitter and have tannins which cause an astringent sensation in the mouth (more on this in a later post).

Umami. I’m not talking about the soybeans that they serve you at the sushi bar, but this is a Japanese word. Umami registers a ‘savory’, or a brothy, or meaty taste. These taste buds register glutamate... as in MSG’s glutamate.

Kokumi. This isn’t an official basic taste (yet), but Scientists have discovered a potential sixth taste. They have discovered the taste bud/receptor at least. They just can’t agree on what kokumi tastes like. It has to do with calcium receptors that have been found on the tongue, but scientists are not sure yet if these have paired receptors in the brain.

Other potential types of basic tastes: There are also suspicions that we can sense/taste other things that have not yet been named as official basic tastes. These are things like fat and other mineral tastes such as iron and copper.

Viva el Vino

Vino Viva translates to "Came Alive". Vino also means wine, which is a living product. It is alive and changing from the time the grapes are planted until they are drank as wine. The wine is constantly changing. Getting better or worse, or just different. We are changing to, and this blog is perhaps also about me changing my career. Let me explain a bit more.

The idea for this blog came from another blog post from an author who I really admire - Tim Ferriss. When I first read Tim’s book, the 4 hour workweek, I dismissed him for a crazy sensationalist only out to sell books. A few years later I revisited the book, and got huge value from it. It was a case of the student needing to be ready for the teacher. I’ve followed Tim Ferriss’ blog now for a few years and find him to have insightful and creative ideas in the areas of lifestyle and entrepreneurial design. On October 4th, just as I was pondering how I might break into the wine business in some way with no formal training, and the only experience of really liking to drink wine... this post came into my email in-box: “8 steps to getting what you want without formal credentials”. So... this blog is my attempt at step 2 of Tim’s 8 step process.

By the time I read this, Step 1 (choose a field you wish to hack) was basically done. I want to become a sort of “sommelier light”. I don’t want to be a wine judge, or a sommelier at a famous restaurant, or a wine critic, but I know I would like to explore doing something entrepreneurial related to wine. And, I know I’m going to need to be more of an expert than I am today. I would like the business to have something to do with education - helping regular people who don’t want to be wine geeks, but think they could get more enjoyment from buying and drinking wine if they knew a little more about it.

So, according to Tim’s step 2, I am to read 1 book a week. I’ve purchased 8 books and skimmed several of them. I am now in the process of reading them. On October 15-16, I attended a 2 day intensive class from the UC Davis Extension college called “Introduction to the Sensory Evaluation of Wine”. I have to say that although the class was excellent, I left liking wine a lot less than before the class began. Becoming analytical about a sensory experience like music or wine can tend to reduce the pure, uneducated sense of enjoyment. So, I don’t necessarily want to ruin the wine experience for anyone, and I see there is value in learning more. But, I want to keep it in perspective, realizing that wine is made to be enjoyed, not analyzed.

I am thinking about how to approach this blog - how to get started, what to write that will have value for other people. Which is hard because I feel that I am just learning myself -- how can I write something of value? Well, maybe I can’t, yet. But I’m just going to start and let the writing take me where it will. Perhaps by writing what I’m doing in my learning, I’ll discover something along the way that will help make sense of the random bits of learning that I’m doing now. That is typically how these things work, I think.