Wine Really Isn't a Matter of Taste! (HT to Barry Smith)

Brian Leiter says it is, and he links to this blog post, by Robert T. Gonzalez, who says wine-tasting is "bullshit."

OK, so first let's separate taste and flavour. Taste comes from the receptors on the tongue, and is restricted to the familiar five—sweet, sour, . . . , umami (plus maybe fat, maybe "metallic"). But we all know that cherry is a different flavour from, say, blackberry and apple from lemon. These differences are not captured by the tongue. They are captured in part by "retronasal" olfaction: the qualities delivered to consciousness from the smell receptors in the nose reacting to vapours rising from the mouth. (These pass over the smell receptors in the direction opposite to vapours taken in from the nose—hence retro as opposed to orthonasal.)

Flavour is a more complex quality than taste, and it is delivered by the tongue working together with the nose (which operates here in a characteristically gustatory manner) and also the trigeminal nerve (which is the main sensorimotor organ in the face).

So point 0. No: wine is not a matter of taste; it is a matter of flavour. (OK, I know Brian meant 'taste' in a different sense, but let's get it straight, since the "bullshit" guy makes a mistake about this right from the start.)

Barry Smith (Institute of Philosophy, University of London)  provides eight more critiques of Gonzalez:

1. He says 'taste' is the least reliable of our five senses. Wrong. Taste proper detects salt, sweet, sour, bitter, savoury (umami) and metallic. Everything else we say that we 'taste', including blackcurrent, blueberry, melon, mint, chocolate, etc. depends on smell, touch and trigeminal irritation. Since we have different sensitivities in these senses and some gaps, there will be large individual differences.  

2. Disagreements about the hundred point rating. The idea that assessment and evaluation can be graded within 87-91 points for a wine should give us pause. Would we do this with paintings or novels? We have always known in aesthetics that there can be disagreement among the critics. So is aesthetic judgement bullshit or utter bullshit? 

3. About not knowing the difference between red and white wine (blind): why don't people who talk about 'the evidence' read the original sources? In the famous study by Gilles Morot and Frederic Brochet, people didn't taste the wines. They only smelled them. True, some used red wine descriptors for a white wine dyed red. Even taking this at face value, what should we conclude? Maybe vision dominates smell. Hardly a revolutionary conclusion. And what if experts were more easily fooled than novices because they had expectations based on colour?

Oh, and by the way: When the same studies were done with tasting there was no such result. Trained panelists can tell red from white wines when tasting blind.

4. By Exhibit C he begins to correct his error in the first paragraph by citing (or rather not citing with any detailed references) the well known results about how what we see can affect what we THINK we taste. Yes, there are illusions created by careful psychological experiments. No kidding. 

And the 'follow up' reported by the New Yorker and actually attributed to Brochet again, but confused in the New Yorker with an unpublished study by Richard Wiseman. How was the study conducted? What qestions were asked. The anecdotally reported 'findings' here bear no relation to the actual data; philosophers in particular ought to be very careful about getting the facts right before rushing to judgement.

5. Exhibit D: now we turn to a blog as evidence. Oh, standards of evidence are getting very low stakes now. But Gonzalez does make a fine point. Critics tasting too many wines may be unable to ensure they are consistent and in good condition to assess. Can any of the philosophers think of a similar case grading a hundred term papers? Mnn. 

6. But why are we taking wine critics as the gold standard for whether tasting wine is based on anything objective. Oenologists and wine makers may just have more accurate ways of tasting and assessing wines. Oenologists have a small, technical, and agreed upon vocabulary for describing qualities of wines. They don't use the descriptors of wine critics trying to assert their authority and convince the public they have something to say. So let's not judge a subject matter by the gadflies. Just imagine judging the worth of philosophy by writers of self-help books.  

7. Exhibit E-ZZZ Here we have a 1996 Journal of Experimental Psychology article. 1996? Wow. This guy's really keeping up. The key psychologists in this area are Charles Spence of Oxford University, Dominique Valentin of University of Bourgogne and Ophelia Deroy form University of London. Maybe should check out their articles from this millennium and most of the quoted research is from 2010 onwards. I realise 1996 seems a recent article to philosophers. They need to talk to their colleagues in psychology. 

8. And The Exception? We're told about a '2008' study. Reference? Yes, I thought so. So these points about enjoyment correlating with expense may be confused with Wiseman's unplublished study. Or it could be, as conceded, that people who have more experience and care about wines like those well made and highly sought-after, and therefore more expensive, wines. No kidding. While, the poor dupe writing this article thinks he just liked the ordinary stuff and it is just as good. We've been here before haven't we? More people like Barry Manilow than Beethoven, so it's just as good, buddy. People like self-help books more than Nietzsche. So, philosophers, should we conclude they are just as good? Let's try practicing what we preach and try thinking before we we endorse the so-called 'evidence'.

Thanks, Barry!