Now we are three
As Oenosthesia – Blending Wine & Music celebrates its third anniversary, I look back at progress in the world of wine and music pairing since the launch of this Substack
Time passes quicker than an Albariño across the palate, and I was reminded this week that it’s been three years since I started Oenosthesia – Blending Wine & Music. Over this time, the Substack has attracted subscribers from across the globe, which enable me to continue sharing serious research from the realms of academia for accessible and enjoyable application in the wider world.
Very special thanks goes to my paid subscribers. I literally wouldn’t have been able to do this without you. Your support means even more as I start work on my academic book on wine and sound, given in this sector of publishing there are no advances and only meagre royalties. For those who’ve been pondering taking a paid subscription, this would be particularly helpful in the coming year, where I’ve dialled back most of my paid work to concentrate on writing the book and this Substack. The benefits include exclusive sneak previews of what I’m writing in laypersons language.
In the last three years more empirical studies have been conducted confirming how music and sound can be used to positively influence the wine tasting experience. This ranges from how the combination can be used to enhance spaces from winery cellar doors,[1] to the mixed reality environments that became more important since the COVID pandemic and with sustainability issues surrounding around long distance travel.[2] Using music as a tool for wine communication has also recently explored and found to resonate with younger people,[3] as well as having multiple applications within marketing more widely.[4]
While the majority of the research of late has been conducted into sound’s effect on flavour perceptions more generally, these studies have been useful in supporting findings that relate to wine. For example, a study has added insights into the conundrum of sweetness, https://drjoburzynska.substack.com/p/sounding-sweet in confirming that sweet music – examples previously identified as possessing musical parameters or acoustic properties associated with sweetness - makes food perceived as sweeter, and better liked.[5] There have also been some interesting developments in taste and musical timbre, an important area identified in my own research on which very few studies have focused (more of that in a future post).
Probably the most marked development in the last three years is the noticeable shift amongst wine professionals who are now taking the influence of sound more seriously. We now have a Master of Wine Susan Lin MW, who successfully submitted her MW dissertation on ‘Influences of Classical Music on the Perception of a Brut Non-Vintage Champagne’, which you can access here. More wine merchants are running wine and music pairing events, such as traditional UK wine merchant, Corney and Barrow, which in 2022 teamed up with a symphony orchestra.
I recall when I first started leading wine and music matching workshops back in 2009, there was a high degree of scepticism amongst the wine trade. This reticence was likely due to professionals not wanting to admit that their judgements could be influenced by external factors, something countered by a study of 154 wine pros back in 2017.[6] The situation may have been compounded by the fact that many just hadn’t sat down, or been sat down, to attend to how sound shapes our experience of the aromas and flavours of wine. Now more are paying the phenomenon focused sensory attention, it’s difficult to deny the interaction.
Over the last three years wine and music pairing initiatives have exploded internationally, as more people realise that synchronising the senses results in more enjoyable and deeper experiences with wine. This great to see, just as long as these are conducted with sensitivity.
As I’ve tried to keep track of the many events being held around the world, I note that there are still many that stick a random selections of wines and music together and call it ‘pairing’. I also see evidence of what I term “egotistical pairing”. This is when the person devising the matches focuses on putting together what they personally like, rather than tuning into the sensory profiles of the wines and music they’re seeking to combine. Taking these sensory dimensions into account are essential if matches are to be made that resonate with a wider audience beyond the person making the pairings.
A high point of the last three years was attending in person one of the most successful wine and music matching endeavours I’ve encountered to date: Ryuichi Sakamoto’s Suite for Krug. In his orchestral composition, the late great Sakamoto created something totally in harmony with three wines from the Champagne house. The intensity of the sensory experience brought me close to tears. It was an example of how the sum of the parts of a great combination of wine and music can heighten the experience to a level that even great wines and music like this could not achieve on their own.
[1] Kahraman, Cansu Ece. "The Use of Crossmodal Correspondence on Designing a Multisensorial Wine Experience for Wineries." (2022).
[2] Cui, Yuanyuan, Patrick van Esch, and Charles Spence. "Multisensory technology in the wine industry: where the senses meet technology." Journal of Wine Research 35, no. 2 (2024): 75-84.
[3] Crichton-Fock, Anders, Charles Spence, and Nicklas Pettersson. "Using crossmodal correspondences as a tool in wine communication." Frontiers in Psychology 14 (2023): 1190364.
[4] Campo, Raffaele, Pierfelice Rosato, and Enrico Battisti. "Multisensory analysis and wine marketing: systematic review and perspectives." British Food Journal 124, no. 10 (2022): 3274-3292.
[5] Guedes, David, Margarida V. Garrido, Elsa Lamy, and Marília Prada. "Disentangling cross-modality and affect in “sonic seasoning”: The effect of music associated with different degrees of sweetness and valence on food perception." International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science 35 (2024): 100879.
[6] Wang, Qian, and Charles Spence. "Assessing the influence of music on wine perception among wine professionals." Food Science & Nutrition 6, no. 2 (2018): 295-301.