Science Says No Two People Taste Wine the Same

  No wonder some people are put off by wine recommendations, gold medals, and tasting notes. It turns out everyone's brain reads tastes and smells differently. When you add that to different interpretations based on the tasting environment to your health to social pressure it's not surprising buying based on someone else's favorites often fails.

Taste and Smell

  The smell plus the taste of a wine gives you its perceived flavor. Your nose, tongue, and mouth all play into a combined sensation of flavor. How much of it is smell and how much taste? That's open to debate. Smell is more complex and not as well understood.

  It's all in the genes. Studies of taste and olfactory receptors show no two people were alike so their taste and smell perceptions will also be different. The studies are a little thick with science, but here they are: Taste  Smell

  For a long time taste was thought to be made up of just sweet, sour, bitter, and salty. Lately umami and fat have been added by some people. Umami is savory, think of a beef soup broth. Besides taste there's mouthfeel or viscosity (thick or thin).

  People have 400 olfactory receptors and can pick up about one trillion scents. So next time you have a hard time describing a particular scent blame on not having enough words to cover all trillion of them.

  Along with all this complexity of tastes and smells there's the environment and your own experiences that all play into trying to interpret and verbalize the wine. Yeah, I'm getting tired just thinking about it.

Nothing to it!   from brainsigns.com

 Describing Wine

  Let's say you're tasting a red wine. The basics you may be able to describe might be fruit, alcohol, oak, acid, sweetness, body, and tannins. Maybe you are able to describe four of those seven. That's fine. But then there are people who write wine descriptions like these (yeah, this is real) to pretend they know more than you or me:

... this texturally silken, supremely elegant effort transparently and kaleidoscopically combines moss, wet stone, gentian, buddleia, coriander, pepper, piquant yet rich nut oils and a saline clam broth savor that milks the salivary glands. 

Tightly focused, with a beam of linzer torte, bitter cherry, plum sauce and fig fruit laced with licorice snap, singed iron and roasted bay leaf. The long finish has lots of roasted fig, tar and spice notes for extra bass ...

  The key is to keep it simple. Is the wine light or bold? Smooth or tannic? Dry or sweet? Soft or acidic? Not much fruit flavor or very fruity? Oaky or not? Simple or complex? These are not on/off switches. Try to measure them on a 1 to 5 scale, for instance. 

  If you are still trying to figure out what kinds of wine you like consider keeping track of wines this way. Eventually you may learn enough about your tastes to be able to tell someone, "I like cabs that are fruity, but not too oaky or tannic" or whatever.

  When you keep it this simple it's easier for us to describe to ourselves and others. It's also more likely others will agree. The more complex the descriptions the less likely others will agree or even understand.