Abstract
A growing body of evidence, both anecdotal and scientifically rigorous, now points to the fact that what people taste when evaluating a wine, not to mention how much they enjoy the experience, can be influenced by the specifics of any music that happens to be playing at the same time. The question that we wish to address here is ‘So what?’ Why should anyone care that music (or, for that matter, specially composed soundscapes) exert(s) a crossmodal influence over the wine-tasting experience? ‘Why not just drink great wine and forget about the music?’ a sceptic might ask. Here, we outline a number of the uses that such research findings have been put to in the marketplace, in experiential events, in artistic performances, and in terms of furthering our theoretical understanding of those factors that influence the tasting experience. We also highlight how the latest in technology (think sensory apps and hyperdirectional loudspeakers, not to mention digitally augmented glassware) augurs well for those wanting to deliver the most stimulating, the most memorable, and certainly the most multisensory of tasting experiences in the years to come. Demonstrations of sound’s influence on wine perception will most likely be applicable to a variety of other drinks and foods too. Ultimately, the argument is forwarded that there are many reasons, both theoretical and applied, as to why we should all care about the fact that what we listen to can change the sensory-discriminative, the descriptive, and the hedonic attributes of what we taste.
Highlights
A growing body of evidence, both anecdotal and scientifically rigorous, points to the fact that what people taste when evaluating a wine, not to mention how much they enjoy the experience, can be influenced by the specifics of any music that happens to be playing at the same time
Modifying the tasting experience with music When thinking about music’s influence on the tasting experience, it can be helpful to discriminate between four different kinds of judgments, or impressions, that we may ascribe to a wine: Hedonic—how much do we like the wine? Sensory—our assessment of the physical properties of the wine and their impact on the drinker; Analytic—concerning such attributes as age, complexity, balance, quality, and price assessment; and Descriptive—would we describe the wine as heavy or light, zingy or lush, masculine or feminine?
As yet, there has been little research conducted to assess people’s responses to auditory, or for that matter, visual stimuli as a function of stimulating the chemical senses in different ways. Having pointed to this as an intriguing area for future research, what we would like to do in this final section is to highlight a number of other reasons for wanting to pair wine tasting/ drinking with the right musical accompaniment, other than merely to change the way in which people respond to the individual components that make up the sensory experience
Summary
A growing body of evidence, both anecdotal and scientifically rigorous, points to the fact that what people taste when evaluating a wine, not to mention how much they enjoy the experience, can be influenced by the specifics of any music that happens to be playing at the same time. One of the striking findings to have emerged from a number of the previous studies in this area is that the better a drinker thinks that the music matches the wine, the more they appear to enjoy the tasting experience ([17, 18]; cf [19]).
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