Thursday, August 23 2007
Wine--It Makes Everything Better. Or Worse.
It's an old saying in the restaurant industry that customers eat with their eyes. I always thought this would make spicy food less appealing, but iI learned that it's a metaphor for how perception informs reality: if you think something is going to taste good, it's going to taste good to you. Seems clear enough, but here's the kicker: apparently we drink with our preconceived notions.
In a 2003 study by Dr. Brian Wansink of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab, diners were given free glasses of wine with their meal. Some were told it was a French wine, others were told it was a local (North Dakota) bottle. It was, in fact, Two-Buck Chuck in both cases. But the people who were shown a French label ate more dinner, and rated the food higher. Those who thought they were getting ND wine ate less and rated the meal 'average'. Same wine, same food, different perception.
This really struck me, because I get a lot of calls from retailers asking for help finding a particular kind of wine for a customer. Typically they've had a bottle of wine on a vacation, or in a great restaurant somewhere, and they're looking for the kit we have that's closest to it. I always have to suppress feelings of despair at these calls, not because we don't have something that's stylistically close to the wine (we might even have a kit that's nearly identical, or can be made so with a little tweaking) but because it isn't the wine that they want to replicate. It's the experience.
It's even worse when the retailer starts off with, 'They just got back from Switzerland . . .'. Typically the people were sitting on a patio on Lake Geneva, or in a ski lodge in Gstaad, and they had a wonderful white wine called 'Fendant'. Fendant is the Swiss name for Chasselas, a grape with long history and short flavour. It's slightly citrusy, good examples hint at grassiness, but mostly it's really, really neutral (hah, Swiss wines taste neutral, who would'a thought?) which is to say, bland.
But the folks were in the mountains, in a wonderfully well-organised, clean country, enjoying the fresh air and perhaps some wonderful cheeses, at peace with themselves in the centre of a grand and magnificent setting. They could have been drinking lighter fluid and would have enjoyed the bouquet and ordered a second bottle. Many times people will bring a bottle home and when they open it, find it very disappointing. 'It doesn't travel well' actually means, 'I couldn't bring the setting and the experience home along with the wine.'
What to do? Nothing, really. There isn't anything wrong with letting a whole experience wash over you, having it enhance your perceptions. One of the most incredibly delicious bottles of wine I ever had was a bottle of Louis Martini Cabernet Sauvignon. While there's nothing wrong with that wine, I recall it as being utter ambrosia. But then, I was falling in love at the time. But we can take a bit of wisdom away from this: it's always good to be mindful of what we eat and drink of itself, and to be present at every moment of our lives. As a wise man once said, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
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