Spence takes us through the discoveries of neuroscientists and psychologists who have demonstrated the primacy of visual sensory information. For example why the voice of a ventiloquist’s dummy is perceived as coming from the dummy’s mouth. He also looks at wine, amongst other foods and drinks, and studies showing the powerful effect of colour on discrimination and description. The important question of how flavour should be defined; as a unitary sensory modality (like hearing) or as a perceptual system is addressed.

Effects, such as ’sensory dominance’ and ’superadditivity’ , are heralding a new era of product design and a ‘new wave’ of chefs. The hope is that we will not just have more exciting and interesting foods to enjoy but that this knowledge can be applied to improve health. For example reducing fat, sugar and salt in our food over coming decades  without sacrificing any pleasure (hedonic valence).

I love being an Associate Editor of the Magazine which manages to thrive as a ‘learned professional journal’ whilst publishing cutting edge and engaging articles of interest to a wide audience. This issue has been circulated freely to thousands of students and I am sure many will become subscribers as their careers develop. Those of you who are not members of the British Psychological Society download a free copy here.

The Maume website states:

The cuvée of Gevrey-Chambertin (1.47 Ha, 30 year old vines) is a blend of several tiny parcels, the principle ones being “les Murots”, “la Justice”, “les Etelois”, “les Fourneaux”, “Clos prieur” and “Combe de dessus”… Whether they come from the place where small Gaillic huts were formerly built or from vineyards that once belonged the superieur abbey, the grapes blended as soon as they enter fermentation vats. The resulting wine is elegant, rich in floral aromas and notes of small red fruit.

On opening it had a lovely cherry nose and promised good things. I tasted it cellar cool and was intially reasonably happy although the finish seemed pretty dull. After half an hour there were some more intriguing, and not unpleasant, earthy notes but the finish remained pretty restrained despite the promising ‘bouquet’. Maybe it is true to its relatively lowly status and actually would have been better drunk quite young.

I expected a lot more from this but know that the mercurial nature of Burgundy means that my other bottles might be very different. Perhaps I should also check the biodynamic calendar for an optimum opening day. The weather has been pretty strange and who knows what effect this might be having.

This paper has been picked up by the international press and has tabloid sub-editors salivating over ‘Booze yourself brighter’ and ’Pour genius’ (boom boom!) headlines. Of course the truth is more complex than soundbytes allow (one of my reservations about Twitter) and reading a complex journal paper is not something most journalists relish, or are equipped to do, (apologies to those that are, and/or enjoy it!). However, this study does appear to offer further empirical evidence for cognitive benefits of moderate wine consumption.

The authors have produced a well thought out paper in terms of the experimental design and justify the conclusions drawn from the large data corpus. It is a longitudinal population-based study and interesting in that light-to-moderate wine consumption was associated with better performance on cognitive tests after 7 years follow up. Their results support findings from previous research on the topic and over the last twenty-five years the association between moderate alcohol intake and cognitive function has been investigated in more than 50 studies. Most show an association between light to moderate alcohol consumption and better cognitive function as well as reduced risk of conditions such as dementia.

Particpants in the Norwegian study (I prefer this term to the convention of subjects) were over 5000 stroke-free, to remove potential confounding variables, men and women. Alcohol consumption and other cardiovascular risk factors were measured and cognitive function was assessed after 7 years follow up with verbal memory test, digit–symbol coding test and tapping test. Moderate wine consumption was found to be independently associated with better performance on all cognitive tests in both men and women. Of note is that there was no consistent association between consumption of beer and spirits and cognitive test results. Alcohol abstention was also associated with lower cognitive performance in women.

Of course the truth is that we have to balance any positive effects of alcohol use against the huge medical and social problems related to problematic drinking. I recall a researcher saying to me some years ago; ‘the bottom line is you will never offset the negative impact of alcohol consumption with positive health outcomes for the majority of people, at least in our lifetime anyway“. The only way this will be achieved in future is through artificially enhanced products where the content of beneficial elements, such as polyphenols, is much higher (and alcohol lower). I also think education will continue to be the definitive factor. Wine may be ‘better’ than many alcoholic beverages because of polyphenol content but, that said, it is really how we consume alcohol (and how much) that matters most. Also wines differ greatly in terms of production and composition so some wines are likely to be better than others (e.g. young unfiltered tannic reds).

Arntzen KA, Schirmer H, Wilsgaard T, Mathiesen EB. Moderate wine consumption is associated with better cognitive test results: a 7 year follow up of 5033 subjects in the Tromsø Study. Acta Neurol Scand: 2010: 122 (Suppl. 190): 23–29.

Thanks to John Wiley & Sons for the journal image and the paper

It was really interesting to see how 2009 is viewed by the French, especially the Bordeaux en primeur offer. I didn’t buy because they are overpriced and earlier vintages from good makers, that are better value and  drinking well now, are readily available. Long-term they may be a good investment and will be enjoyable wines  but I have a feeling there may be a few price dips over coming years and the usual re-evaluation of initial impressions. I will back-fill once picture is clearer and dust has settled.

Vintages of the century are unsustainable if they occur every 5 years and the opportunism of the recent prices stinks. Bordeaux is becoming increasingly irrelevant to younger wine consumers and even old friends are feeling exploited. The first growths can rest on their laurels and name any price but lower down the pecking order producers will suffer because of a strategy based on short-termism. This attitude is characteristic of many businesses and not peculiar to the wine world but it does seem likely that as wine becomes more of an investment vehicle that corruption will increase.  Dodgy wine funds (with no wine), ‘insider dealing’ (how can critics justify expensive jollies on companies that they are giving scores to?) and forgeries (just check out the price of empty bottles on ebay!). Consumers are being misled and ripped  off in such a multitude of ways

Anyway, 2010 is unlikely to scale the heights of 2009 judging by the current wet weather and relatively poor quality grapes (anonymous example pictured left). I most enjoyed visiting St Emilion, Monbazillac and Bergerac and drank good wines at all price points. France is still awash with honest and affordable wines made by dedicated people.  I hope to blog in more detail when I get the time.

Five wines are produced at Setley Ridge but I guess more money is made from the excellent food on sale in the farm shop (pictured right). This is the economic reality of producing low volumes of wine in an area not traditionally associated with viniculture. It takes time to develop a portfolio and makers here are invariably unsung heroes battling against the odds. Land and labour are expensive, and production costs mean these wines are competing with high quality imports. You need to diversify and have a good business plan if you are going to survive.

The red, made from a blend of Regent, Rondo and Triomphe, is clearly a work in progress. Drinkable but at £9.95 probably reliant  on inquisitive tourists. The Seyval also unlikely to compete at £7.99 unless the buyer is keen to support English producers. The blend of Seyval and Muscat, also £7.99, is more successful and could make an impact at the right tasting. It is one for a forward-thinking restaurant to add to its list. The rosé  (Schonberg and Rondo) could ride the increasing popularity of this style and might find a good home at some of the summer sporting or arts events in the UK. At £8.95 it needs an affluent audience willing to reject Californian blushes which retail at half the price. The local pubs have Ringwood bitter and it would be nice to see more of them stocking these local wines.

Perhaps the most interesting wine in the Setley portfolio is their ‘Special Release Red’, a Pinot Noir. This is the grape that is most likely to reveal terroir and I was intrigued, and relatively impressed, by their effort. It is nowhere near the sophistication of many Burgundys or new world pinots at this price point (£12.95) but is a noble attempt at exploring the potential of the grape in the UK. I would love to see how it performs in a blind tasting and it is only through the endeavours of the vanguard in the South of England that progress will be made. I have no doubt that really good Pinot Noir, that can compete with the rest of the world, will be produced in the UK over the next few decades. Many scoffed at the idea of English fizz reaching the level it is at today but are now eating humble pie.

The New Forest offers lots of other good reasons to visit but the opportunity to taste wines can only add to its attractiveness. I caught up with youngest brother Oliver (still only 22 and helping to manage one of the best pubs in the area) and beat him at tennis despite my age. We followed the game with a swim in the seawater pool and 9 holes of golf (which he won by 2 shots but my eagle on a par 4 hole made my day) - a kind of relatively sedate triathlon. We also went for lots of walks and did a bit of foraging. Best were some lobsters from a local supplier (3 weighing a total of nearly 2 kilos for £22) because we picked out ones that had lost claws or legs and thus had become unattractive to restaurant buyers. The spaghetti with lobster for 6 we knocked up was superb and incredibly cheap for such a treat.  I also remembered to borrow a fishing rod to take to France next week. The great thing about catching a fish is that you can splash out on the wine, maybe even an English one.

Setley Ridge is situated right in the middle of the New Forest National Park. Lymington Road, Brockenhurst, SO42 7UF. Tel 01590 622246

http://www.setleyridgevineyard.co.uk/

See if you can identify the Psychologist (pictured left) given the post below.

You can tell a person’s personality from the words they use. Neurotics have a penchant for negative words; agreeable types for words pertaining to socialising; and so on. We know this from recordings of people’s speech and from brief writing tasks. Now Tal Yarkoni has extended this line of research to the blogosphere by analysing the content of 694 blogs - containing an average of 115,000 words written over an average period of about two years - and matching this with the bloggers’ (predominantly female; average age 36) answers to online personality questionnaires.

Some commentators have suggested that the internet allows people to present idealised versions of themselves to the world. Contrary to that idea, Yarkoni found that bloggers’ choice of words consistently related to their personality type just as has been found in past offline research.

More neurotic bloggers used more words associated with negative emotions; extravert bloggers used more words pertaining to positive emotions; high scorers on agreeableness avoided swear words and used more words related to communality; and conscientious bloggers mentioned more words with achievement connotations. These were all as expected. More of a surprise was the lack of a link between the Big Five personality factor of ‘openness to experience’ and word categories related to intellectual or sensory experience. Instead openness was associated with more use of prepositions, more formal language and longer words.

The sheer size of the data set at Yarkoni’s disposal allowed him to look not only at links between personality factors and broad word categories (as past research has done) but to also zoom in on the usage of specific words. Among the most strong and intriguing correlations were: Neuroticism correlated with use of ‘irony’ and negatively correlated with ‘invited’; Extraversion correlated with ‘drinks’ and negatively correlated with ‘computer’; Openness correlated with ‘ink’; Agreeableness with ‘wonderful’ and negatively correlated with ‘porn’; and Conscientiousness correlated with ‘completed’ and negatively correlated with ‘boring’.

‘The results underscore the importance of studying the influence of personality on word use at multiple levels of analysis,’ Yarkoni concluded, ‘and provide a novel approach for refining existing categorical word taxonomies and identifying new and unexpected associations with personality.’

Yarkoni, T. (2010). Personality in 100,000 Words: A large-scale analysis of personality and word use among bloggers. Journal of Research in Personality, 44 (3), 363-373

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2010.04.001

The cork has an obvious flaw in it and the musty smell was a particularly good example! I let my sons smell it (without priming them) and both described it in unpleasant terms. I also got them to smell another white (admittedly not a Reisling) which elicited much more flattering descriptors. The youngest had a particularly strong response to the taint and is generally sensitive to odours. Our threshold for detecting TCA is usually a few parts per trillion but this can vary by several orders of magnitude depending on each individual’s sensitivity. I have a friend who is particularly sensitive and bemoans it as a curse. If there is one glass on a table with it, he says that it taints all the others he tastes. Detection is complicated by quick habituation to TCA, making the smell less obvious on each subsequent sniff. It can therefore pay to go with first impressions.

I wish I could taste a bottle of the same wine that had been screw topped. Riesling can age well under a screw cap and cork taint is not an issue but there is an aesthetic pleasure in pulling a cork that I would greatly miss if it disappeared completely. Cork producers do need to diversify and improve product reliability though. The costs to makers and consumers is significant. Corks are unlikely to disappear at the top end of the market though. They are associated with notions of quality and authenticity and there should be a demand for good quality corks for a long time.

The Bar Boulud menu is based on French charcuterie served alongside seasonal bistro cooking. Situated in the basement of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Knightsbridge (formerly the old Hyde Park Hotel), it has its own separate entrance and is a slick operation. The set menu at lunch and between 5.30 - 7 pm is £20 and an absolute steal for cooking of this quality.

Chop-chop salad with lobster and Oysters fin de claires were fine to start but the charcuterie tasting board and DBGB ‘piggie burger’ (cooked perfectly medium-rare as requested) were outstanding.  If there is a better burger in the UK I haven’t eaten it. The drawn pork, ’slaw’ and home made bun complimenting a succulent and perfectly formed thick pattie of top quality ground beef. The charcuterie is also outstanding and a terrine based on Moroccan lamb tagine was beautifully spiced and memorable for good reasons.

Daniel Boulud favours the Rhone and Burgundy and this is reflected on the list, which is strong and has a good choice by the glass as well as top-end bottles for four-figures. Sommelier David Vareille suggested Domaine des Neuves Roches (website here) Saumur Champigny 2009 made by Thierry Germain (one to watch in his own right). Unfiltered young Cabernet Franc, pleasingly ‘cloudy’, aromatic and bursting with red and black fruits. Served chilled it was a great foil to richness of burger and charcuterie. I have written previously about wines from the Loire which are increasingly reliable and excellent value. In the hands of a skilled maker, like Germain, Cabernet Franc can excel.

My only criticism, and it took some thinking to identify a downside, would be the slightly ‘hotel’  feel to Bar Boulud. You could be anywhere in the world and so it did not really have a London feel to it and could become quite staid. Even so , this is a great addition to Knighsbridge and I guess, even in these tough times, it will thrive because it gets the basics right.

Bar Boulud, Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, 66 Knightsbridge, London, SW1X 7LA, Telephone: 020 7201 3899

We left Athens and did a roundabout trip taking in most of the Saronic islands and some of the mainland towns such as Epidavros. A highlight was mooring in the notoriously difficult Hydra (pictured right) after the rescue of a French family. They had snagged their anchor on an electrical cable and Pete dived down over 5 metres to release it. He is an absolute legend and with Mike, Paul and Roy, was fantastic company.

In between the sailing I managed to read, and make notes on, William Younger’s opus; Gods, Men and Wine. It was a work of love he completed following a stint working for the intelligence services during the war. The introduction sets the tone to this learned and fascinating history of wine;

“Wine suffers a heaving birth. It has a rough, groping childhood. It develops into adolescence. Then if it does not sicken, it matures: and in this it is almost human since it does not mature according to a fixed rule but according to the law of its particular and individual personality. The act which gives it personality is the act of fermentation. In this metamorphosis it is changed from fruit into animal: sometimes even an animal of splendor.”

It was great to read about wines in antiquity whilst visiting some of the places mentioned. The section on wine and the Romans is incredibly insightful and informative, and some of the illustrative plates fascinating in terms of aesthetics and content. If you can get hold of a copy it is one of the great wine books.

As for the wine we drank… I am a lover of Greek wines but found the majority of the bottled wines available on the islands were overpriced and poor. However, we ate out most evenings and the house rosé in most tavernas was consistently enjoyable and very cheap. No-one ever seemed to know the grapes but it was fresh, light and perfect for the food and climate. Usually, but not always, quite dark for rosé, it was good to support local producers who, like many Greeks, are having a tough time. We often left carrying a couple of litres (mineral water bottles refilled) which we  subsequently drank at lunch the next day, after a sail and swim, over one of Roy’s miraculous lunches whilst moored off a secluded cove. Bliss.

At times I found myself reflecting on how life must have been for the Greeks on these islands thousands of years ago. Wine had important functions in terms of religion, economics and culture but was also ‘medication’, nourishment and entertainment. I like to think the wine I drank was pretty close to some of those they had enjoyed and, in many ways, beneath the veneer of modernity and sophistication little has changed.

Younger, W. (1966) Gods, Men and Wine  The Wine and Food Society

I have also changed the front page. I know the picture of me in front of the painting looks a bit smug but it was taken by a friend and I like it! People often ask about the painting and for the record it is by an artist called Emma Bennett and I bought it at an end of year show at Central St Martins in the early 90s. The other panel hangs in my office (pictured) because it is hard to find an 80 square ft wall to hang them together. I have quite a few images to search through/upload to make pages more visually engaging and am conscious that pages can be less dynamic than posts in the blog.

I also need to focus on writing another chapter for the book rather than blogging but will try to update the site at least weekly. I will be adding lots more references and also plan to update the education links (so if you know of any good courses or structured tastings let me know the details). I might also add some ’social tastings’ if people send details of these.