Wine Research
My interest in wine stemmed from my work in memory—I was seeking a context where there were clear differences in knowledge between novice and expert consumers. Our first paper in this area (LaTour and LaTour 2010) looked at how those with intermediate knowledge aficionados—were more likely to succumb to the negative effects of verbal overshadowing, where when they tried to describe the wine in their own words, they were less likely to be able to recognize it later. We found that having aficionados use a wine aroma wheel which gave them the proper language to describe the wine, as well as an advertisement that also highlighted sensory language, were helpful in their memory retention as it served as a “bridge” between their perceptual and conceptual knowledge.
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We then more broadly developed our teaching materials to differentiate perceptual from conceptual approaches, and found that novices benefitted more from learning conceptual information about the wine than just having sensory details suggesting they needed a broader framework in order to remember the wine’s taste (LaTour, LaTour and Feinstein 2011).
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Becoming a Wine Expert
At this point in time I began my own wine education journey. Some believe that wine experts are born that way, that they are endowed with a more sensitive palate. I learned this is not the case, but that there is something genetic regarding tasting, which is called being a “supertaster.” In our research we found that supertasters were more discriminating and sensitive to sugar, and also once they found a brand they liked, they were more likely to stay with it.
(LaTour, LaTour and Wansink 2017).
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My focus returned to how one becomes an expert taster. I found that all the certification systems (Court of Master Sommeliers, WSET) had some type of lexicon/grid to assist the wine learner to become more proficient in describing wines in an objective manner. While this approach can be helpful, becoming more expertise in wine tasting provided elusive for many students. Unfortunately, the academic research on expertise suggested that the only path was diligent study requiring more and more analysis over a long time (10,000 hour rule). However, after interviewing Master Sommeliers, I found that while initial analysis is helpful, having a more holistic approach to tasting is necessary to develop expertise. Those experts in particular noted the importance of thinking of wine taste in pictures and stories. Tim Gaiser, a Master Sommelier I interviewed, has an excellent guide and book on how to develop tasting skills, see his web-site here. In our research (LaTour and Deighton 2019) we found that having enthusiasts draw the taste of their wine led to better retention of their taste experience than writing a verbal note. In one study enthusiasts using this technique performed at a similar level as experts.
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This holistic approach is not only relevant for wine--I wrote about how it relates for hedonic appreciation more generally in this article linked here.
Tasting Room Experience Design
The usage of cross-sensory learning is an important aspect of getting a more holistic understanding of wine. A winery’s tasting room is the main source of education, and Meaghan Frank, CEO of Dr. Frank Vinifera in the Finger Lakes, has developed innovative tasting experiences at her family’s winery, particularly with her 1886 experience. We took a group of Cornell students to Champagne to visit LVMH wineries with Cornell alum Richy Petrina and we were entranced with Krug’s music and wine pairing experience. Meaghan developed an art, music, and winetasting experience and was interested in how that would affect guests’ impressions of her wines. So we enlisted Oxford sensory scientists Janice Wang, Charles Spence, as well as Berklee School of Music faculty member and food opera designer Ben Houge In Wang, Frank, Houge, Spence and LaTour (2019) we report on a study how music affected the wine’s flavor.
I began working with Annamma (Jamy) Joy, at the University of British Columbia, studying tasting room experiences in another wine producing region-- the Okanagan Valley. We first looked at how the tasting room experience relates to brand loyalty, analyzing TripAdvisor reviews (Joy, Yoon, Grohmann and LaTour 2021). We then became interested in how staff education strategies might be utilized more effectively for different types of wine consumers based on their background knowledge and experience (Joy, Wang, Orazi, Yoon, LaTour and Pena 2023).
Shape Drawing Applications
In order to show how this holistic shape drawing technique could apply to industry, I worked with QUINI, a wine education company that uses images as part of their tasting app, to test the importance of images for expressing taste, especially with younger generations of wine consumers
(LaTour, Joy and Noujeim 2021).
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I have also worked with Gilian Handelman, at Kendall Jackson winery, who has incorporated shape drawing and other cross-sensory educational materials in her work, click here for one session we did at the Unified Symposium. See more of her work here, and see how she transformed verbal tasting notes to visual images here.