I am wearing a cardigan.
There we go, it feels better for sharing. In fact I now have two of these peculiar front button garments. Maybe my late thirties is bringing on convenience at the expense of style, but I am informed that they are the height of fashion, which definitely means they are so 'out' already.
Anyway now I have my cardigan out of the closet.. I was sitting by the fire last night in my armchair, puffing on my pipe reading the broadsheets when I noticed a wine story about the lack of consistency of wine tasting judges.
In tests, over 90 percent of judges failed to give similar scores to identical bottles. They were way off at times. Shock horror, as if anyone really believed that the complex human chemosensory system was a consistent reliable tool. I know that my taste perception changes day to day, in fact 'The Journal of Neuroscience' published research from the University of Bristol in 2006 that says taste is directly effected by mood.
Salt and bitterness diminish with increased anxiousness, so imagine a stressed Miles from 'Sideways' tasting a heavily tannic Bordeaux, it would seem like a light fruity Valpolichella, or even Ribena.
Happiness can produce more serotonin in the brain increasing sensitivity to bitter and sweet tastes. Remind me not to try a Tokaji sweet wine whilst in high spirits.
The scientists discovered that taste changes throughout our lives, day to day, even minute to minute.
Award winning wine labels should include the mood of the taster, perhaps their sense of self- worth, even their mental history. There again forget the mental history, the NHS is doing its best to leave all of our records in a very expensive electronic black hole.
Aside from moods I am sure the delicate chemosensory system gets overloaded during wine tastings. The neurones have lots to deal with, all those thousands of nuances in a sip, brutally mangled verbally by the taster as pretentious descriptors ...'Bavarian bark'... 'turgid tarmac'. Not to mention the effect of seeping alcohol on the brain from an accumulation of absorbed alcoholic residue left in the mouth after attempting to make use of a spittoon.
The wine itself is also subtly changing character and evolving every day, and this adds yet more unpredictability to the mix, by the time the bottle graces your table.
So electronic sniffers are the future? There are e-noses and e-tongues out there, what a scary thought. Combine that with manipulation of molecules with computer models in the wine making process, and we end up in a boring colourless sterile world. Wine becomes as predictable and dull as a bottle of Ribena.
I love the inconsistency of wine and the eccentric cardigan clad pontifications of those who taste it. A wholly human experience.

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