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Does
learning about wine enhance its enjoyment?
Recently, I've been thinking quite a bit about some of
the issues discussed in the wine
and philosophy conference that has been reported here. I'll
state clearly at the outset that I'm no philosopher - my training
is as a biologist. So I'm exploring carefully this rather
unfamiliar territory, aware that I'm liable to make some rather
glaring errors of understanding. Nevertheless, I beleive that
reductionist science, in this case physiology and neurobiology can
helpfully both inform and constrain these areas of philosophical
investigation. So here are some thoughts of mine on the issue of
learning about wine and its ability to enhance enjoyment.
The other way of answering this question is to ask
whether wine is purely a sensory pleasure? Or, to put this another
way, is the pleasure experienced by a connoisseur accessible to a
novice? Intuitively, many people would answer no to both these
questions, but let’s try to look for a more reasoned answer.
There is a level of enjoyment that relies on (or is
derived from) sensory input, but can only be accessed with
supplementary cognitive abilities that are learned. For example,
if I am faced with a sheet of music or a page of Hungarian text, I
can derive no enjoyment from them even because I can’t read
either music or Hungarian. However, if someone who reads music or
speaks Hungarian sees these same texts, they can derive enjoyment
from them because their learning has given them an ability to
decode the visual stimuli into either notes or a coherent text.
The sensory (visual) experience will be potentially the same for
all when they look at the sheet or page – irrespective of their
abilities with music or languages – but only those with
appropriate learning will have the capacity to derive enjoyment
from this experience. [Actually, the visual representations will
differ because those who can understand the significance of the
stimulus will attend to it differently than those who don’t.
Thus the significance of the text will draw in the reader to give
it more attention, who will therefore have a different sensory
experience as a result. But the point I’m making is probably
still valid. This caveat illustrates the complexities of building
these sorts of arguments.]
Levels
of enjoyment
How does this apply to wine? The difference is that there is a
level of enjoyment of wine that is open to all, irrespective of
experience. We have an innate preference for some flavour cues.
Many wines have some sweetness of fruit that is appealing to
novices, and certain successful popular styles of wine focus on
providing simple, accessible, fruity flavours. People also
appreciate wine for its intoxicating properties. Let us call this
wine’s ‘hedonic’ appeal. But there are two further levels of
appreciation that can be teased out, which only come with
experience and learning, although it is likely that for most of us
this separation is a rather artificial one; in reality our
appreciation of wine probably results from a seamless fusion of
all three levels.
Learning,
understanding, benchmarking
The first is that of learning and understanding, a purely
cognitive process. As we learn about wine in general – the
history, geography, grape varieties, winemaking practices,
differences between producers and so on – and as we face each
new glass, the different aspects of the sensory experience take on
fresh meaning. We attend to the process of tasting more carefully;
we understand the significance of the various aromas and flavours,
the structure and the texture. We begin to develop our own
‘culture’ of wine by a process of exploration and
benchmarking: we read what ‘experts’ consider to be good and
bad expressions of wine, and this then shapes our own preferences
and values.
Acquiring
tastes
Secondly, there is a degree to which our own
preferences change, shaped in a non-cognitive manner. It seems
that in addition to possessing an innate set of flavour
preferences – or ‘universals’ – people have the
flexibility to acquire tastes. These acquired tastes are often
more enduring than our innate preferences. Many of the foodstuffs
around which a connoisseurship has developed, such as coffee, real
ale, cheese and malt whisky, have tastes that are initially rather
off-putting. This flexibility in preferences is likely adaptive:
in a novel environment, we would do well to utilize as broad a
range of safe foodstuffs as possible. Hence our senses of taste
and smell are closely coupled to memory: we try a novel food item,
and if we become ill then we later find it aversive; if we
don’t, then we can log this new food as potentially desirable.
The connection between memories and tastes and smells is widely
recognized, most famously in Proust’s A la Recherche, where the author’s sniff of a Madeleine dipped in
lime blossom tea took him back to his childhood and reminded him
of his meetings with Tante Leonie. Interestingly, the memory led
to a change in the author’s emotional state to that experienced
during these childhood encounters.
Another comparison, this time with visual art, can be
made. Some paintings are accessible and can be enjoyed on a
hedonic level by a broad audience. Take a trip to the National
Gallery and look at the crowds surrounding the impressionists, or
the groups admiring the photo-like precision and elegant
composition of the tiny Vermeers. You don’t need a degree in art
to appreciate these pictures. But what about the Tate Modern? To
someone without a sufficient context, it’s all a bit
inaccessible and perhaps even rather soulless.
Learning – in this case a solid grounding in the
history of art, and perhaps an understanding of the background,
influences and motivations of the artists themselves – can
elevate appreciation of all visual art, but we notice this most
clearly with works that lack sufficient initial hedonic appeal,
where real ‘enjoyment’ is going to be mostly cognitive.
Perhaps, though, this separation into cognitive and non-cognitive
enjoyment of sensory input is a false one.
Cognitive input may change the ‘sensory’ experience
and lead to greater ‘sensory’ enjoyment. The fact that I have
thought and learned a great deal about wine may increase the
significance of certain taste and smell stimuli, such that when I
drink a great wine I know this immediately when it hits my palate.
Conversely, will someone untrained in wine know a ‘great’ wine
the moment they taste it? I suspect they won’t.
Here we have, potentially, a rather indirect test of Kent
Bach’s question as to whether learning enhances the
enjoyment of wine. We could present what is considered by the wine
trade to be a great wine to a group of experts and non-experts and
compare their responses. [Should we do this blind? We could, but
the sight of the label might be important to the actual sensory
experience itself.] It is likely that the novices will come away
bemused by what experts consider greatness to be in terms of wine.
This is a complicated area, though, and I’d qualify this by
saying that in certain wine cultures different qualities are
revered. In wine cultures where ‘size’ (that is, the
concentration, density and lushness of fruit) is considered of
primary importance, the ‘best’ wines will often be immediately
accessible to novices, so this test might not work.
Finally, I’m aware of one piece of experimental work
that addresses this question directly. Read Montague, a
neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, recently
devised an experiment on the basis of a series of TV commercials
in the 1970s and 80s where individuals were subjected to the
‘Pepsi challenge’. In this test Pepsi was pitted against Coke
blind, with subjects not knowing which was which. They invariably
preferred the taste of Pepsi, but this wasn’t reflected in their
buying decisions. Montague wanted to know why. So he re-enacted
the Pepsi challenge with volunteers. The difference was that this
time their brain activity was being scanned by an MRI machine. On
average, Pepsi produced a stronger response in the ventral putamen,
a region thought to process reward. In people who preferred Pepsi,
the putamen was five times as active when they drunk Pepsi than it
was in Coke-preferring subjects drinking Coke.
In a clever twist, Montague repeated the experiments,
this time telling subjects what they were drinking. Remarkably,
most of them now preferred Coke. The brain activity also changed,
with activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, a region that
shapes high-level cognitive powers. The subjects were allowing
what they knew about Coke – its brand image – to shape their
preferences.
The implications for winetasting are clear. When we
don’t taste blind, our preferences are liable to be shaped by
pre-existing information we have about the wine. Try as hard as we
might to be objective, this isn’t possible. What we know about
wine will mould how we perceive the wine, and will even shape how
much we enjoy a particular bottle. The important thing to note is
that the subjects weren’t ‘fooled’ in some way by the
knowledge of what they were drinking – instead, their actual
enjoyment of their drinking experience changed. Expectations about
the experience changed the actual nature of the perceptual
experience. This suggests a mechanism for learning to change
enjoyment of wine. It’s not conclusive, of course, but strongly
suggestive.
The
philosophy of wine
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