BPS Lecture and Celebration at The East Room

By mthomas

It was nice to be asked to speak about Psychology and Wine as part of the British Psychological Society London and Home Counties series of lectures. I was amazed, and appreciative, that so many people braved the heat and sacrificed watching Murray play at Wimbledon to attend my talk. It was interesting to talk to people from the wine world who had managed to get tickets, as well as colleagues from the various Divisions of psychology. I have had some lovely feedback and really enjoyed the night.

I had kindly been invited to celebrate with a few friends afterwards at The East Room. This is part of the Milk and Honey stable of members clubs and is very handily situated in Tabernacle Street a few doors down from from the BPS offices.  It has some excellent wines available including a selection of New World bottles in Enomatic (vending)machines which allowed us to sample some cracking Rieslings before heading upstairs to the roof terrace.  The star for me was Jeffrey Grosset’s Polish Hill 2008 Reisling which was minerally and somehow lean yet rich (I know this is somewhat oxymoronic). It was packed with refreshing lime and slightly nutty notes. A really refreshing glass of wine on a hot London night.

Thanks again to Laura and the staff at The East Room.

A New Lexicon for Wine References

By mthomas

The July issue of Decanter contains one of the most interesting articles I have read in a long time.  Jeannie Ho Lee, Korea’s first Master of Wine, makes the case for new ways of communicating about wine using reference points that are relevant to Asian wine drinkers.

Jeannie outlines different attitudes towards wine consumption and the contrasts between Western and Asian reference points for wines.  For example, few Asian cultures consume cold drinks whilst dining.  Tolerance levels for tannins vary widely but in areas such as Southern China, where black tea is drunk, appear to correlate with enjoyment of full bodied tannic red wines.  The importance of the Asian market in ‘keeping things afloat during recent downturns in wine prices cannot be overstated and the popularity of the Manga comic Les Gouttes de Dieu representative of not only a growing interest in wine but also of  the emergence of a new vocabulary.

As Jeannie, and others, point out the notion of an Asian palate is controversial and we should be mindful not to engage in stereotyping.  Within all cultures there is huge variation in tastes.  People can be reliably identified as being non-tasters, tasters and super-tasters due to genetic variation in their responses to specific compounds in food.  Interestingly there is evidence for cultural variation in this with 33% of North Europeans being non-tasters whilst only 10% of the Chinese population are. Also cultural variants such as the separation of fruit and flower descriptors common to French or North American tasters would be alien to most Vietnamese tasters who would not distinguish between the two.

Jeannie suggests it will take a generation of wine writers to find a language relevant and meaningful to Asian wine lovers but suggests a few reference points. For example Asian reference points for Chardonnay might included wakame seaweed (for minerally wines), jackfruit (pictured above) and egg custard.  This would be in contrast to Western reference points of peaches, melon and butter.

I find this new lexicon exciting and would urge wine lovers from all cultures to  strive to appreciate the wonderful diversity of our individual and subjective experiences of wine. The journal article below might be of interest.

Bartoshuk, L. M. (2000). Comparing sensory experiences across individuals: recent psychophysical advances illuminate genetic variation in taste perception. Chem Senses, 2000, 25, 447 - 60.

Nuno Mendes at The Loft

By mthomas

I am still reeling from an amazing night in an unlikely location; a supper club and test kitchen in Dalston. Nuno Mendez developed his skills at the California Culinary Academy, El Bulli and his own pub/restaurant Bacchus in Hoxton. He is now using his home in Kingsland Road to host a series of elaborate and experimental dinners to develop the menu for Viajante, his next venture, which will be in Bethnal Green. Judging by the long waiting list for The Loft, Viajante is likely to be a huge success even in these credit crunched times. Nuno deserves the great reviews he has been getting for his 15 course (I can’t be sure as I lost count) tasting menu with cleverly matched wines.  I will not try to do the menu justice here as other bloggers and critics have catalogued each course, and in some cases every ingredient, in their meals. I can however try to capture the special atmosphere he has created.

Nuno cooks in a surpringly small kitchen attached to the dining room and is supported by a trio of welcoming helpers.  Twelve of us arrived at 7.30 on a Saturday and immediately started exchanging accounts of why and how we found ourselves thrown together in such a convivial way. The only things we all seemed to have in common were inquisitiveness,  a London postcode and an interest in food. I really enjoyed getting to know everyone during the evening and was struck by how much this added to the experience. Following an ice-breaking lychee martini with sansyo pepper (the ground dried leaves of the prickly ash tree which produces Szechwan peppercorns) and snacks including gougeres with saffron we sat at the large communal dining table. We were welcome to wander over and watch Nuno at work and he regularly came over to tell us about a dish and to seek feedback from us. For most dishes this was unequivocal acclaim but, interestingly, in the case of one dish (which included cauliflower, milk, strawberries and a couple of things which escape me) unanimous bemusement.  Nuno talked about the dish being challenging and what he was trying to achieve with it in a manner that made me warm to his openess, honesty and engagement. It is a dish that many people finished, despite their ambivalence, and I found myself  going back to it repeatedly to try to make some sense of it. It was not the most enjoyable thing I ate that night but was the dish that really confused, subverted and extended my understanding of flavour and texture.  Less challenging, but nonetheless enjoyable and interesting, dishes included a squid ink porridge with milk yuba that defies logic with its tastiness, ‘umami-tastic’ pork with scallop sashimi, an orange skin puree and lemongrass shot, wonderful shrimp and melon concoction with a pipette of shrimp essence that elicited gasps of pleasure and a white chocolate, passionfruit and black olive pud to die for. The numerous  fish dishes, which included sea bass, sea trout and red mullet were testament to the fact that Nuno is particulalry adept in this area. A picture gallery of the venue and some of Nuno’s amazing creations can be found here.

Good company and great food is a fine combination but the addition of a series of matched wines took the evening to heady heights. A sparkling Vouvray, Verdejo from Valladolid, NZ Sauvignon Blanc,  wonderful Jurancon and supple Givry all contributed. However, there was a nagging voice in my head suggesting alternatives for every course and I would love to plan a wine list for one of Nuno’s menus. Having said that I can’t complain about any element of the wonderful 5 hours I spent at the Loft. A big thanks to Nuno and his colleagues for hosting such a brilliant evening.

Passive perceptual learning in relation to wine

By mthomas

This experiment by Angus Hughson and Robert Boakes from the University of Sydney addressed the question of whether untutored experience of drinking wine improves the ability to discriminate between wines.  Using a short-term recognition task a two-factor design compared more experienced and less experienced wine drinkers (intermediate vs. novices) and a condition requiring description of the to-be-remembered wine samples with a control condition.  Their findings suggest that intermediates were generally more accurate than novices in selecting the target sample from a distractor set.  The procedure was modelled on a previous study in which verbal descriptions reduced the performance of intermediates (verbalovershadowing), but here both novices and intermediates performed better in the description than in the control condition.  The major result was to demonstrate that untutored experience can improve wine recognition (passive perceptual learning).

People with longer experience of wine drinking, but not much greater knowledge, perform better in a wine identification task. However the size of the effect was not large and, given the way in which exposure to a stimuli would be expected to enhance perceptual ability, might be smaller because of a number of variables. Firstly, exposure benefits tend to come from the initial exposures (sometimes as low as four with smell). Secondly, the use of dark tasting glasses may have confounded the effect of experience by reducing available ‘imprinted’ information. Thirdly, wine experts tend not to perform as well as would be expected in simple discrimination tests. Hughson and Boakes cite Lawless (1984) and Parr et al (2002) as evidence of this. They suggest that high levels of discrimation demonstrated by experts usually relate to training in more specialized vocabulary and specific knowledge (such as that associated with Australian Chardonnays from the same vintage but from different regions) rather than extensive experience of drinking wine.

Another finding, that verbal instruction can facilitate performance, supports continued use of ‘label training’ in wine evaluation courses i.e. the aim of developing the ability to produce conistent labels for the sensory elements of wine. This can be at a general level such as ‘fruity’ or more specific such as ‘damson’. This has often been contentious, in part I think because of the accusations of ‘purple prose’ and pretension associated with such behaviour. Perhaps more salient was the evidence they present to contradict the suggestion that this type of teaching might not be effective due to verbal overshadowing.

To an experienced educator the findings make sense in terms of the limited utility of exposure to a learning opportunity without some mediation by a skilled and experienced instructor.

The paper is published in The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 2009, 62 (1), 1-8

Orballo Albariño 2007

By mthomas

This Albariño from Virgin Wines demonstrates many of the standards of the Rías Baixas style without being outstanding in any way. It is well balanced with a good level of acidity making it zesty and invigorating. It has lots of characteristics of the grape variety, and terroir, such as white peach and almond as well as pear drops, and herbacious notes. The Atlantic facing south of Galicia in Spain produces pretty consistent examples of Albariño and the 2007s I have tasted from here have all been enjoyable. My favourite so far though is Albariño D Fefinades 2007 which has another level of complexity and lovely olive and aniseed flavours. It took me back to my time teaching in Seville and would be perfect with a selection of tapas, especially prawns. It also exhibits deeper minerality and longer finish than the Orballo but is a bit more expensive (although I picked up some at a discount in a bin end in Waitrose Canary Wharf). The Fefinades compares well with a mid-range Riesling and is worth the outlay to set yourself a tasting benchmark for this area and style.

Winepsych is launched!

By mthomas

It has been a labour of love and not without teething problems but winepsych is now well and truly live. I’m still trying to master the web publishing package (Wordpress) and have to keep reminding myself that it takes time to become adept at new things. I am a great believer in ’fit for purpose’ and usually something being ‘good enough’ is fine. This is a website about wine and psychology and I need to concentrate on content now.

My desk at home is covered with journal articles, book reviews, tasting notes and assorted articles that I will be uploading at every opportunity so keep checking the site for new info. Having said that I recently returned from Croatia but have not had the opportunity to write up my notes. I thought Dubrovnik was lovely and the people friendly. I guess that the conflict in the area has left many Croats wanting a peaceful existence.

One useful piece of advice regarding the often patchy wine is that I found Krauthaker more consistent than most producers and was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the Rosé and Graševina aka Welschriesling. This ancient grape was probably introduced to central Europe by the Romans and most of the synonyms in Central Europe are variations on ‘Italian Riesling’. It can be floral and astringent with excellent minerality. I liked the good examples a lot.

I am due to speak in London in a few weeks (click here for details) and hope that this will provide an opportunity to celebrate the site launch. In the meantime I will try to update the reasearch page and add some wine and book reviews.