Wine Scholar Guild Initiates the Architecture of Taste Research Project
The Wine Scholar Guild (WSG) has initiated an ambitious undertaking aimed at developing a new way to assess wine: the Architecture of Taste Research Project (ATRP), The Architecture of Taste Research Project aspires to find a way to empower the individual to taste and describe wine with an enriched and universal lexicon that not only dives deeper into assessing the qualities of a wine’s building blocks but also into the nature of a wine’s personality and, where relevant, its corresponding terroir signature.
Just as significantly, the research project aims to develop a new set of assessment criteria that uses the body’s own reflexive reactions as a tuning fork to capture a wine’s inherent signal—a message that incorporates not only sensory perceptions but also perceived energy, the emotions it triggers and evocative elements that, once again, might link a wine to “place.”
In the planning phase, those involved in the project took into account how language formats individual thought and collective culture. The last decades emphasized aromatic descriptors at the expense of other sensory modalities, but recent studies challenge this approach, since olfactory notes may speak more about the genetic background, the experience and the culture of a person applying them than about a specific molecule within the wine itself. For this reason, WSG has decided to rebalance the focus and put tactile and mouth-feel descriptors center stage, since these may prove more communicative. Regardless of experience or culture, for example, few would confuse thin with thick, or rough with smooth.
“Most dry Alsace Riesling Grands Crus check the same boxes in an analytical tasting grid. They unfortunately all resemble each other if you use analytical tasting methods,” states Julien Camus, WSG President, Founder, and leader of the Architecture of Taste research project. “Although they all belong to the same ‘family,’ assessing each wine from a tactile and geo-sensorial standpoint highlights the individuals within the ‘family.’ We’re hoping to introduce geometry together with other textural elements to assess origin more effectively.”
The first large-scale panel tasting using the Architecture of Taste research project’s new tasting grid will take place in Alsace in September of 2021. Participants will include wine producers, sommeliers, wine retailers and journalists as well as serious wine hobbyists. An update on how the new tasting methodology is received as well as statistical findings will follow.
Julien Camus is directing the Research Project and has put together a multi-disciplinary, advisory committee of professionals including Gabriel Lepousez, neuroscientist; Benoît Marsan, wine chemist; Marc-André Selosse, botanist and mycologist; Thibault Boulay, historian and vigneron; Clémence Corbière, historian and sommelière; Pascaline Lepeltier MOF, restaurateur and wine writer; Andrew Jefford, journalist and author; and Lisa M. Airey, CWE, wine educator. This project has been inspired by and builds upon the pioneering geo-sensorial tasting concepts developed and promoted by, among others, Henri Jayer, Jacky Rigaux, Aubert de Villaine, Jean-Michel Deiss, Claude & Lydia Bourguignon, Bruno Clavelier, Stéphane Derenoncourt, Didier Daguenaeau, Partick Baudoin, Anselme Selosse, Pascal Agrapart and Alexandre Chartogne.