from the water-tasting-like-wine-again? dept.
Liquor conglomerate Diageo has performed experiments that show a person's perception of taste changes depending on other sensory inputs at the time:
If you drink a glass of single malt in a room carpeted with real grass, accompanied by the sound of a lawnmower and birds chirping, and all bathed in green light, the whisky tastes "grassier". Replace that with red lighting, curved and bulbous edges and tinkling bells and the drink tastes sweeter. Best of all, creaking floorboards, the sound of a crackling fire and a double bass bring out the woody notes and give you the most pleasurable whisky experience.
The nascent field of Neurogastronomy has shown that everything around us, from the ambient sounds to the colour of the crockery, significantly alter the way food tastes. As these same senses are involved in contextualizing the tastes, smells, textures and sounds of food as we eat, manipulating those senses with secondary inputs while eating seems to be the next logical step towards the perfect gastronomic experience.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Wednesday April 16 2014, @11:41PM
Everything is better by a crackling fire.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday April 17 2014, @05:29AM
Overrated IMHO. The bacon, however...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Thursday April 17 2014, @12:35AM
Based on this, I predict (assuming that it's not already happening) that there will be restaurants where people go to be served food while the lights change in odd ways, sounds are piped in, and they are instructed as to what's going on. Cost? $1000/plate. At least one of these places will get the coveted 3-star Michelin rating. If the Simpsons is still on the air, they'll poke fun of it. Then people will start looking for the next big culinary thing in a year or two.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday April 17 2014, @01:00AM
Meh, seems unlikely that a restaurant is going to invest in a whole bunch of nonsense tech just to sell a drink. Its not like they have any problem selling those anyway. Too hard to mood match each menu item. Much easier to stick with their current theme, and perhaps fine tune that.
Its not like this study came from an independent source, and after you first Single Malt any restaurant (as well as your date) looks just fine.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by opinionated_science on Thursday April 17 2014, @12:21PM
There are restaurants staffed by the blind to accentuate the food. I saw it on BBC QI...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 17 2014, @01:04AM
Wine tasting, liquor tasting, vodka especially, it's roughly 97% all BS. The surprise is that a liquor company would admit it.
The more interesting thing would be if any of this dubious research applies to tasting food and not gussied up liquid drugs...
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday April 17 2014, @01:13AM
The secret to wine tasting is to demand side by side tastings. Declare a winner between each side-by-side, and take that winner to the next round, just like a basketball bracket. Walk out with the final winner, or the cheapest of the two if you can't tell any difference. Don't be afraid to walk out empty handed.
Don't pay a bit of attention to the bar tender's pitter-patter, and all the nonsense about what you are supposed to "taste". Just be your own judge, and don't swallow much. (Clouds your judgement and confuses the pallet).
Its all about YOUR perceptions, not about the sales job.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Thursday April 17 2014, @01:31AM
I think for wine and other culinary offerings, it comes down to people that *can* tell the difference.
There are huge swaths of human experiences that are simply unavailable to large portions of the population. I can barely tell the difference between sounds, and never really could.
It's like seeing math in music. I believe that you literally need to be possessing of that gift to appreciate wine and the subtle differences in cooking with the same spices, but from different locations.
So while I do believe that some people can tell the difference for real, I also believe they are the minority trying to sell the majority on an idea that their preferences should result in a greater expense of one wine over another.
That's just all perception. I can tell the difference between the major groups, but just give me a freakin' glass of wine and I will be happy.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by velex on Thursday April 17 2014, @02:52AM
There's some interesting information in Oz and James' Big Wine Adventure [wikipedia.org]. Captain Slow and Oz Clarke take wine road trips through both France and California, although I prefer Michigan wines myself. When they get to California iirc, they start to really make the point that sales and cost don't exactly correlate with quality.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Thursday April 17 2014, @08:42AM
I was thinking of exactly that program while reading these comments. The moment I was thinking of was when Oz was introducing James to the principle of Terroir, of which James was rather skeptical until that breakthrough moment when he actually did pick up on the subtle differences it made. What it brought home to me was that putting effort into perceiving something increases your appreciation of it's subtleties.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday April 17 2014, @03:48AM
I really wish I could like wine, but mostly, the acidity just gives me heartburn and being inextricably intertwined with painful sensations for me, I basically hate it. There are only two wines I've ever objectively liked -- a Ghost Pines merlot that was so oaky it was like chewing on a stick -- probably gave it a sense of sweetness too. I think that was $30/bottle. The other, Carlo Rossi Sweet Red, at something like $10 per 4l jug is something I'll willingly drink. But in general, giving me wine is equivalent to throwing it away, unless someone else wants to finish my glass less the three sips I took.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday April 17 2014, @01:21AM
The entire foodie scene is pretentious, and food reviews are the culinary equivalent of +5, Troll posts. Consider the following example review of human shit, as seen from the perspective of famed natural food critic The Hungry Housefly:
That was the local food critic's review of bone marrow, minimally adjusted to "another dish" but still equally "unctuous" and faithful to the original due to all those piece-puffing adjectives foodies like to use.
That being said, I wonder what cheap malt liquor would taste like in dim light in front of a monitor, with the smell of feet and the scritchety sounds of roaches and silverfish scurrying everywhere inside a studio apartment the size of a jail cell?
Aw...
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday April 17 2014, @06:40AM
Was going to comment until EF changed the environment. Now all I can think of is. . . . OK, that is in the past, and we will concentrate on present. Nope, not working.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday April 17 2014, @05:32AM
Could it be they discovered that massively selling cheap liquor will improve their bottom line better than selling quality stuff?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Thursday April 17 2014, @08:37AM
Here's an example of the 3% that isn't bullshit but happens to be bull grass: Żubrówka [wikipedia.org]¹ :D
Before now I had no idea it's illegal in the US. Words fail me.
¹ Never having tried it before I thought Punycode [wikipedia.org] was meant to work "everywhere" but Wikipedia barfs at it (xn--ubrwka-dxa60i [wikipedia.org]).
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 2) by unitron on Thursday April 17 2014, @01:14AM
...are tied to one another, any experiment that lets the drinker smell anything but the drink is flawed.
something something Slashcott something something Beta something something
(Score: 1) by naff89 on Thursday April 17 2014, @07:09AM
(Score: 2) by unitron on Thursday April 17 2014, @08:51AM
"...If you drink a glass of single malt in a room carpeted with real grass ...
something something Slashcott something something Beta something something
(Score: 2) by SlimmPickens on Thursday April 17 2014, @02:04AM
Hsston Blumenthals whole career is based on this idea. He's been publishing papers about it for years, and frankly, he's taken it a lot further. From wikipedia: [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 17 2014, @06:01AM
And he gets to be a pretentious dick about it. Which is nice...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 17 2014, @02:09AM
Haven't you ever gone to take a drink of water/pop and thought at the time you were picking up the other than you did?
You'll swear the water tastes like pop. Or the pop like water.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday April 17 2014, @10:40AM
No, but I have bitten into a jam (jelly) sandwich expecting to taste my usual cheese sandwich, and had to suppress my brain's immediate "spit it out! it's WRONG!" reaction.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 1) by KritonK on Thursday April 17 2014, @01:31PM
I was once given a small glass of what I thought was beer, which I drank in one gulp. If it weren't for its tasting rather flat, and the surprise on the faces of those watching me, I would never have guessed that it was Scotch!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday April 17 2014, @02:36AM
I love seafood. I've always complained that you just can't get good seafood anyplace inland. It never tastes the same, it never equals fresh seafood eaten in a harbor town.
On a trip, I stopped one evening to eat, and ordered a catfish dinner. I found that I had much more food than I could possibly eat, and asked for a "doggy bag". Got back on the road, and drove for several hours, and started feeling hungry. There I was, driving east along the Gulf coast, smelling the salt air, the mud flats, and all the life in the ocean. The same catfish that was "alright" hours earlier was absolutely delicious!
Yeah, environment affects your perceptions.
(Score: 1) by anyanka on Thursday April 17 2014, @10:30AM
...from last time I tried to eat a Mars bar in the sewer.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday April 17 2014, @10:44AM
Well, bugger me with a fish fork. And all this time I thought it couldn't possibly have any effect at all.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk