The Volatility Manifesto

[Mike Evans]

originally posted by Josh Fontaine:
speaking of which :

Ainsi parle Alice Feiring

It’s nice that after years of unincredulously preaching a romanticized fetishization of process that Alice has finally acknowledged that the results matter too. I wonder if she realizes the extent to which her own simplistic and reductive zealotry contributed to the very problems she has finally recognized are common in the natural wine world. I doubt it, when she pushes out idiotic lines like “There were a few traditional holdouts in Italy, but mostly the country made undrinkable mass-produced blockbusters.”

 

[mark e]

originally posted by Mike Evans:

originally posted by Josh Fontaine:
speaking of which :

Ainsi parle Alice Feiring

It’s nice that after years of unincredulously preaching a romanticized fetishization of process that Alice has finally acknowledged that the results matter too. I wonder if she realizes the extent to which her own simplistic and reductive zealotry contributed to the very problems she has finally recognized are common in the natural wine world. I doubt it, when she pushes out idiotic lines like “There were a few traditional holdouts in Italy, but mostly the country made undrinkable mass-produced blockbusters.”

Of course, the quote about Italy is sheer nonsense. However, to blame her for people making defective wine is just about as nonsensical. She just doesn't have that much influence.

 

[Keith Levenberg]

Maybe she's just trolling Levi.

 

[BJ]

I knew Jolly Ranchers were the source of all evil.

And are we saying the Nordics are shithole countries? I'm confused.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

Nathan, I'm not going to do your homework for ypu. Denying that taste is 80% smell is like denying that inheritance is particulate rather blended. Of you asked me for a source I'd have to refer you to a19th century monk who researched beans and I can guess what your response would be. Researchers have known about supertasters for years now. Your own dip into the research has already shown you (if you'll read) that sensitivity to taste in acid varies. I suppose you've heard of the number of peop!e who taste coriander as soapy. And of course you have experienced variability in sensitivity to TCA among wine drinkers. More instructed people on this bored could go on.

The notion that trained researchers in your field, my field or any other field are impervious Tobias is charming but false.I would be insulting you if I told you that you seem to be unaware of the danger of bias in your own case as well as mine or any other's. That's one of the many reasons we have people looking over our shoulders and checking out results.

 

[VLM]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Nathan, I'm not going to do your homework for ypu. Denying that taste is 80% smell is like denying that inheritance is particulate rather blended. Of you asked me for a source I'd have to refer you to a19th century monk who researched beans and I can guess what your response would be. Researchers have known about supertasters for years now. Your own dip into the research has already shown you (if you'll read) that sensitivity to taste in acid varies. I suppose you've heard of the number of peop!e who taste coriander as soapy. And of course you have experienced variability in sensitivity to TCA among wine drinkers. More instructed people on this bored could go on.

It's not my homework, you are making statements based on your reading of the popular press and passing it off as the current state of knowledge in a technical field where you have no expertise or bona fides.

Taste is physical taste. Olfaction is an independent and different sense. They may be complementary (again, the real evidence of this is spotty, mostly because it is hard to study), but when you are talking about TCA you are talking about olfaction. Stating that there are physical differences because there is evidence of some physical differences (that may be very uncommon) in gustation (taste), a completely different sensory modality that uses different receptors, different neural pathways and different processing regions does not make logical sense.

The notion that trained researchers in your field, my field or any other field are impervious Tobias is charming but false.I would be insulting you if I told you that you seem to be unaware of the danger of bias in your own case as well as mine or any other's. That's one of the many reasons we have people looking over our shoulders and checking out results.

I just don't know that you can speak on this topic. Sometimes studies have to be retracted, so all science is false. The system is imperfect and I'm on record with program officers from NIAID and the Gates foundation about ways I think things should change to improve that.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

I'm out. Saying taste is physical taste and olfactory sensation is different is like saying inheritance is blended. The rest of what you say is not responsive. Of, course, neither is this.

 

[MLipton]

Wow, what a can of worms I opened. Nathan, surely you’re not saying that retronasal olfaction isn’t a large component of what we usually consider taste? After all, how else could a wine taste fruity? Or are you saying that this is the result of a higher level integration of sensations? My statement, BTW, is purely anecdotal, as I’ve been at any number of group events where perception of various flaws, of which VA was most assuredly one, was wildly at variance, even when all involved were quite experienced amateurs.

Mark Lipton

 

[Brian C]

They are different! When we colloquially use the word "taste" we are referring to how we percieve the combination of these two neural pathways. But there is taste and smell and the two ain't the same. And Mendel worked with peas not beans.

 

[Jeff Grossman]

I agree with Brian C: the word "taste" is being used in different ways by the speakers. Prof and Monkey are talking past each other.

 

[mark e]

originally posted by MLipton:
Wow, what a can of worms I opened. Nathan, surely you’re not saying that retronasal olfaction isn’t a large component of what we usually consider taste? After all, how else could a wine taste fruity? Or are you saying that this is the result of a higher level integration of sensations? My statement, BTW, is purely anecdotal, as I’ve been at any number of group events where perception of various flaws, of which VA was most assuredly one, was wildly at variance, even when all involved were quite experienced amateurs.

Mark Lipton

I had never intended to get mired in a discussion of the neurophysiology of taste, which is a bit too far outside of my area of knowledge. However, though my memory is flawed, I do remember a textbook I'd used in school titled something like "The Organoleptic Analysis of Food" that detailed, backed up by multiple studies, the use and vetting of tasting panels in the food industry. Tests included paired, triangle, ranked, etc. Point is if you want to produce, say, a consistent industrial product - at least when I studied this - you needed people to taste and compare the product(s) rather than relying solely on instrumental analyses.

Fact is, we all don't have the same sensory equipment and in some cases, such as my own training to identify VA in wine samples (we had to practice ranking them), it is something you can learn to do. The reasons should be obvious to everyone here; if you are a winemaker going around checking all the barrels in the cellar it is an important tool to have, without sending dozens of samples to a lab first.

Imagine a lab where you are testing wine samples closed with natural cork and attempting to find how many bottles had evidence of TCA using people not instruments. You would want to weed out those who could not do the job.

In the real world, it is quite helpful for restaurant staff to be trained to identify what I call "sub-threshold corkiness" in a given wine that is served by the glass (i.e, a wine that less than expressive aromatically and has a shorter than normal finish owing to low levels of cork taint.) This is something I attempted to do, but had limited success at because no one really thought it was quite as important as I did (and some simply did not have the sensory ability to do this).

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

Brian and Jeff,
Go back to where VLM first asserted that smell had nothing to do with taste. He was talking about wine tasting originally and he has steadfastly denied that taste and smell are related If he merely wanted to say that by taste, he referred to sweet, sour, salt, bitter, and umami, he could have said so, but then his original remark to Mark would have been a non sequitor. It wouldbe more to the point to note that the outcome of that dispute says nothing about whether the resulting "taste" is variable, so if he meant to make a technical distinction among what the tongue senses, what the nose senses and the resulting flavor, he might have just stated the tautology and moved on. If he agrees with Brian about what we colloquially call taste (I am assuming Brian means flavor; otherwise I need more information from him) we can indeed move on.

 

[Oswaldo Costa]

originally posted by mark e:

originally posted by MLipton:
Wow, what a can of worms I opened. Nathan, surely you’re not saying that retronasal olfaction isn’t a large component of what we usually consider taste? After all, how else could a wine taste fruity? Or are you saying that this is the result of a higher level integration of sensations? My statement, BTW, is purely anecdotal, as I’ve been at any number of group events where perception of various flaws, of which VA was most assuredly one, was wildly at variance, even when all involved were quite experienced amateurs.

Mark Lipton

I had never intended to get mired in a discussion of the neurophysiology of taste, which is a bit too far outside of my area of knowledge. However, though my memory is flawed, I do remember a textbook I'd used in school titled something like "The Organoleptic Analysis of Food" that detailed, backed up by multiple studies, the use and vetting of tasting panels in the food industry. Tests included paired, triangle, ranked, etc. Point is if you want to produce, say, a consistent industrial product - at least when I studied this - you needed people to taste and compare the product(s) rather than relying solely on instrumental analyses.

Fact is, we all don't have the same sensory equipment and in some cases, such as my own training to identify VA in wine samples (we had to practice ranking them), it is something you can learn to do. The reasons should be obvious to everyone here; if you are a winemaker going around checking all the barrels in the cellar it is an important tool to have, without sending dozens of samples to a lab first.

Imagine a lab where you are testing wine samples closed with natural cork and attempting to find how many bottles had evidence of TCA using people not instruments. You would want to weed out those who could not do the job.

In the real world, it is quite helpful for restaurant staff to be trained to identify what I call "sub-threshold corkiness" in a given wine that is served by the glass (i.e, a wine that less than expressive aromatically and has a shorter than normal finish owing to low levels of cork taint.) This is something I attempted to do, but had limited success at because no one really thought it was quite as important as I did (and some simply did not have the sensory ability to do this).

This, where the rubber meets the road.

Once you learn to detect and identify v.a. -- even in small amounts that before used to blur with the other acidities --, there's no turning back. But unless more people focus on the issue, protest the supposed natural/v.a. causation, and start demanding cleaner wines, a lot of reputational damage will be done by drinkers who haven't trained themselves to detect it, or, worse, who equate v.a. with natural.

 

[Oswaldo Costa]

This may be incorrect usage, and the "onlys" may be too extreme, but it has helped me to keep things clear to call flavor the things that only the nose detects, to call sensations the (five or so) things that only the mouth detects, and the coming together of flavor and sensation as taste. Retro olfaction is just the illusion that one experiences flavor in the mouth.

When I have a head cold and my nose is stuffed, I can't detect any flavors at all but I can still get some ritualistic pleasure from a glass of wine with (flavorless) dinner because of the mouth components. That's when I pull out an oaky wine. Next time this happens, I'll pull out a wine with acceptable v.a. to see whether the absence of counterbalancing flavors makes the v.a. more salient.

 

[VLM]

originally posted by Brian C:
They are different! When we colloquially use the word "taste" we are referring to how we percieve the combination of these two neural pathways. But there is taste and smell and the two ain't the same. And Mendel worked with peas not beans.

Finally. Olfaction and gustation are different senses. Taste is a sensation of sweet, salt, sour, bitter and maybe umami. Olfaction is everything else (although there are some physical sensations in the nose from some stimuli that may interact with the perception of odor).

 

[VLM]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
I'm out. Saying taste is physical taste and olfactory sensation is different is like saying inheritance is blended. The rest of what you say is not responsive. Of, course, neither is this.

You don't understand what I said, only Brian C seems to.

 

[VLM]

originally posted by MLipton:
Wow, what a can of worms I opened. Nathan, surely you’re not saying that retronasal olfaction isn’t a large component of what we usually consider taste? After all, how else could a wine taste fruity? Or are you saying that this is the result of a higher level integration of sensations? My statement, BTW, is purely anecdotal, as I’ve been at any number of group events where perception of various flaws, of which VA was most assuredly one, was wildly at variance, even when all involved were quite experienced amateurs.

Mark Lipton

Retronasal olfaction is how we perceive all of the flavors that come across the palate and is hugely important when it comes to food and wine. Strictly speaking, a wine doesn't taste fruity, it smells fruity.

Yes, there is a lot of integration of olfactory information at the cortical and amygdalar level. Incidentally, it is this special relationship with the amygdala that is thought to make olfactory memories so vivid and transporting.

 

[VLM]

originally posted by mark e:

originally posted by MLipton:
Wow, what a can of worms I opened. Nathan, surely you’re not saying that retronasal olfaction isn’t a large component of what we usually consider taste? After all, how else could a wine taste fruity? Or are you saying that this is the result of a higher level integration of sensations? My statement, BTW, is purely anecdotal, as I’ve been at any number of group events where perception of various flaws, of which VA was most assuredly one, was wildly at variance, even when all involved were quite experienced amateurs.

Mark Lipton

I had never intended to get mired in a discussion of the neurophysiology of taste, which is a bit too far outside of my area of knowledge. However, though my memory is flawed, I do remember a textbook I'd used in school titled something like "The Organoleptic Analysis of Food" that detailed, backed up by multiple studies, the use and vetting of tasting panels in the food industry. Tests included paired, triangle, ranked, etc. Point is if you want to produce, say, a consistent industrial product - at least when I studied this - you needed people to taste and compare the product(s) rather than relying solely on instrumental analyses.

Human olfaction can be a pretty amazing instrument, IME.

Fact is, we all don't have the same sensory equipment and in some cases, such as my own training to identify VA in wine samples (we had to practice ranking them), it is something you can learn to do. The reasons should be obvious to everyone here; if you are a winemaker going around checking all the barrels in the cellar it is an important tool to have, without sending dozens of samples to a lab first.

This is the heart of the matter. My point was that, broadly speaking, the equipment we have, perception thresholds and the like, do fall within a fairly narrow range. It is a distribution, for sure, but it's almost certainly Gaussian and not particularly platykurtic.

The training you mention, like the endless hours one spends smelling wines as a winemaker and fine tuning your apperception of sensory input. It's like your first years in the wine business when you go to every tasting available and taste thousands of wines a year to build that base of knowledge.

In the real world, it is quite helpful for restaurant staff to be trained to identify what I call "sub-threshold corkiness" in a given wine that is served by the glass (i.e, a wine that less than expressive aromatically and has a shorter than normal finish owing to low levels of cork taint.) This is something I attempted to do, but had limited success at because no one really thought it was quite as important as I did (and some simply did not have the sensory ability to do this).

Again, this is all down to experience and training. You have to know how a wine is supposed to show in order to pick up sub-threshold TCA.

 

[VLM]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Brian and Jeff,
Go back to where VLM first asserted that smell had nothing to do with taste. He was talking about wine tasting originally and he has steadfastly denied that taste and smell are related If he merely wanted to say that by taste, he referred to sweet, sour, salt, bitter, and umami, he could have said so, but then his original remark to Mark would have been a non sequitor. It wouldbe more to the point to note that the outcome of that dispute says nothing about whether the resulting "taste" is variable, so if he meant to make a technical distinction among what the tongue senses, what the nose senses and the resulting flavor, he might have just stated the tautology and moved on. If he agrees with Brian about what we colloquially call taste (I am assuming Brian means flavor; otherwise I need more information from him) we can indeed move on.

The problem is that you continually conflate the two and then insult my integrity as a scientist.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

I never conflated the two. I believed you were talking about flavor, and if it were not so impossible to quote selectively on a tablet, I think I could show you did, even if that was not your intent. Not did I insult you as a scientist unless you really believe you are, unlike everybody else in the world, impervious to bias.