Can music change the taste of a wine? A recent experiment seems to suggest so.
By Amanda Barnes | Posted Tuesday, 11-Mar-2014
A shed in deep southern Chile is emitting some rather strange sounds: a chaotic mix of jazz and folk music resonates from the garage winery.
Winemaker Juan Ledesma is making wine with the help of a little music. But he isn't serenading the wines solely in the barrel room or vineyard as others have done before him. Instead, he has plunged music speakers into the actual barrels. Welcome to Terroir Sonoro.
The avant-garde project of Viñas Inéditas could be dismissed as a kooky garage wine, but a $200,000 grant from Chile’s Agricultural Innovation Fund and the results of his first professional tasting last month prove it's a serious undertaking.
On February 8, a panel of four wine professionals and 12 amateurs took part in a blind tasting, assessing the musical wines alongside control barrels that had been produced in comparative silence – and 15 out of 16 tasters spotted the difference.
The wiines: a Cabernet Sauvignon from Itata and a Malbec from 200-year-old vines in Bio Bio (pictured below) were made identically. The grapes were all picked on the same day, and processed in the same way before both being aged in lightly toasted barrels from the same forest and cooper for the same amount of time. The only difference was that the Terroir Sonoro wines had a speaker playing jazz music within the barrel.
Why? Because Ledesma believes it will improve the wines.
Technically speaking, he thinks the unfiltered wines enjoy greater interaction with the lees because of the musical vibrations caused by the speakers, leading to specific aromas.
Mad But Mellow Malbec
“I thought it was madness,” admits one of the judging panel, François Massoc, the winemaker at Clos des Fous, Aristos, and Calyptra.
© A. Barnes
“Although there have been previous cases of wineries using classical music for their wines, I never thought that it could have any technical sustenance. But this madness is not an ‘artist’s whim,' it is a serious scientific study that is well considered and has achieved results in a short time.”
For each blind tasting the panel were given two glasses of one wine and a third glass of another (e.g. Malbec Control – Malbec Sonoro – Malbec Control). The aim was to try to identify which of the three wines was different. In the Cabernet test, 94 percent were successful, while 88 percent mastered the Malbec. It should be noted that according to the rules of wine tasting – where the most unusual results are usually removed – the tasting showed a 100 percent success rate.
For each blind tasting the panel were given two glasses of one wine and a third glass of another (e.g. Malbec Control – Malbec Sonoro – Malbec Control). The aim was to try to identify which of the three wines was different. In the Cabernet test, 94 percent were successful, while 88 percent mastered the Malbec. It should be noted that according to the rules of wine tasting – where the most unusual results are usually removed – the tasting showed a 100 percent success rate.
The second part of the tasting required the panelists to complete spider diagrams of the aromatic profile of each wine, to see if they could identify what impact the musical treatment had on taste.
“The aromatic profile of the wines with Terroir Sonoro treatment indicates a more complex evolution and contributes to the aromatic expression in general,” Ledesma concluded from the results.
In fact, some of the professional judges concurred (without knowing) that the Sonoro wines were "more rounded" and "less harsh" than the control wines, which would suggest a preference. However, other panel members don’t recall registering a preference as such, just a difference.
read more: http://www.wine-searcher.com/m/2014/03/chilean-immerses-wines-in-jazz
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