Language and Taste:

Does knowledge of wine descriptors help or hurt people in tasting wine?

Andrew LeePsych 334

Dr. Dedre Gentner

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Introduction

Language and taste is a domain in which a lot of work has been done in the past

20 to 30 years, especially in regards to wine. Wine is a promising topic of research when

it comes to studying the affects of language on taste because it is not completely clear

that we all share the same perceptual experiences when we drink wine. Further, the

established tradition of expert wine tasters versus novice wine drinkers allows us to more

easily study if these two groups perceive wine differently. Now why does studying the

difference in how experts taste wine versus how novices taste wine give us insight into

the affects of language on taste? One major difference between expert wine tasters and

novice wine tasters is the language in which they use to describe and talk about wine

(Solomon GE 1990, Langlois et. al. 2011). Experts are known to have far greater

knowledge about wine descriptors than that of novices. While this is quite obvious and

hardly surprising, if all that is different between experts and novices is this knowledge of

a specific lexicon, namely “wine talk,” then it is fair to say that a difference in wine

perception between these two groups can be attributed to language. The main focus of this paper, then, is to see if greater knowledge of wine

descriptors hurts or helps people’s ability to taste wine. My hypothesis is that knowledge

of wine descriptors either helps or hurts people’s ability to taste wine depending on the

individual’s level of expertise. It is too strong of a stance to say that greater knowledge

of “wine talk” will always hurt or help one’s ability to taste wine, as some of the papers

discussed below will propose. Because the knowledge is gained gradually (learning takes

place over time and not instantly), studying the affects of language on taste over time

may show that language both helps and hurts taste depending on the knowledge of the

individual at a given time. This seems to be a much more comprehensive hypothesis than

just arguing solely for one side.This paper will begin with a thorough examination of literature that argues for the

helpful affects of language on taste, along with studies that argue for the opposite. Then,

I will further develop the hypothesis I presented in the previous paragraph by discussing

problems and insights that the existing research provides us with. I will end by presenting

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a possible study, and talking about what the theoretical results of said study could tell us

in terms of language and taste. Language Helps Taste

One of the cornerstone studies of language and taste research in the realm of wine

is a study conducted by Harry T. Lawless (1984). In this study, Lawless had both experts

and novices write descriptions for three wines. Then a group of participants, half of

whom were experts and half of whom were novices, matched the descriptions to each

wine to the best of their ability. Lawless found that expert wine tasters were much better

than novices in matching the expert description to all three wines. Novices were at or

below chance in matching both the expert and novice descriptions, and experts also fell

below chance in matching novice descriptions to the wines. What this tells us is that the

language that experts use contain specific wine descriptors that are useful to experts in

matching descriptions to tastes, but useless to novices in performing the same task. Indeed, Lawless found that expert wine tasters frequently used terms that were multi-

dimensional and concrete, while novices only used single non-orthogonal terms. An

example of a concrete wine descriptor would be something like “lemon,” compared to a

non-orthogonal descriptor such as, “fruit.” In terms of wine experts then, language seems

to be helping taste. Experts are able to use a more specific lexicon to accurately describe

taste in a manner that is comprehensible to other experts. Lawless’s findings were supported in a later study conducted by Gregg Eric

Solomon (1990). Solomon sought to improve on the matching method used by Lawless

and instead had subjects taste a wine and choose from a set of two descriptions (both

descriptions written either by experts or novices) rather than match three descriptions to

three wines. Solomon claimed that this method was more accurate than Lawless’s and

reduced game strategy during the procedure of the experiment. What Solomon found

was essentially a replication of Lawless’s results; that experts are much better than

novices at matching expert level descriptions to wines. Again, novices were below

chance when attempting to match both expert and novice descriptions to wines, and

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experts were also below chance when matching novice descriptions to wines. There

seems to be at least two questions that arise from these findings. One: why do experts

perform below chance when matching novice descriptions to wines? Solomon explains

this by saying that novice wine tasters simply do not have the language necessary to

accurately describe wines. This seems to explain why both novices and experts found the

novice descriptions to be virtually useless. Also, an interesting finding to consider is that

experts used an average of six terms to describe any given wine, while novices used an

average of three terms. The fact that experts used almost double the amount of terms as

novices is in part due to the greater lexicon that is available to experts. Here, having

greater knowledge of wine descriptors is helping experts in being able to identify,

quantify, and describe aspects of taste that are either not picked up by novices or unable

to be intelligently described by them (this is an important topic and will be discussed later

in greater detail). The second question deals with novices and their lack of expert “wine

talk.” If novices were given a list of terms that experts used to describe wines, would

they be able to identify and describe wines in a manner similar to experts? In the second

part of Solomon’s (1990) study, he attempted to answer exactly this question. A group of

expert wine tasters and a group of novice wine tasters were given a list of around 130

terms that were regularly used by experts. The thought process was that if the only thing

separating novices and experts was the lack of a proper lexicon, then perhaps providing

the lexicon to the novices would allow them to taste and describe wines like experts. The

results of the experiment turned out to be quite different. Novices often picked

combinations of terms that “experts scoffed at” (Solomon 1990). An example of such a

combination is “butterscotch” and “bitter.” To an expert, this is an impossible

combination of flavors. At surface glance, these results seem to lead to the conclusion

that language does not affect taste at all, and that experts are only better at tasting and

describing wine because they have been trained for many years to do just that. However,

the fact that the novices were hurt and confused by wine descriptors could be attributed to

their lack of training and exposure to the language. As seen in the two aforementioned

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studies, wine descriptors aid experts in tasting and describing wine, at least in some

capacity. It is possible consider then, that while wine descriptors hurt novices’ ability to

taste, somewhere along the line between novice and expert, these descriptors actually

become a benefit. D’Alessandro et. al. (2013) also argues on the side of language as being helpful to

taste, with the view of language as a toolkit. In their experiment, D’Alessandro et. al.

(2013) had a group of expert and novice wine tasters drink and describe the quality of a

wine. This is notably different than both Lawless (1984) and Solomon (1990) in that

rather than asking the subject to pick from pre-made descriptions after tasting a wine, the

subjects were free to describe the quality of the wine in whatever manner they saw fit. What D’Alessandro et. al. (2013) found was the experts were much more analytical than

novices in describing the quality of the wine. Similar to Lawless (1984), the experts used

more mulit-dimensional descriptors and even drew on examples outside of taste (country

of origin, brand information, etc.) to strengthen their descriptions on the quality of the

wine. Novices, on the other hand, experienced difficulty in describing quality. An

interesting point that D’Alessandro et. al. (2013) noted was that novices had a hard time

translating what they were tasting into words. Mentioned briefly in the earlier paragraph,

this brings up the question of, do novice wine tasters already have a subconscious

knowledge of wine descriptors but just lack the proper lexical training to describe tastes?

If this is the case, then language, while still helpful, is not this key to unlocking a whole

new world of wine tastes as it was made out to be in Lawless (1984) and Solomon

(1990). Rather, language would just be a tool: a tool that individuals could use to

describe a perception that already exists in their minds. Keep in mind that D’Alessandro

et. al. (2013) is still arguing that language helps taste, but just as a tool. Solomon (1997)

expands on this view of language as a toolkit by demonstrating that novice wine tasters

do indeed have a subconscious understanding of wine taste and wine descriptors, but just

lack to tools in which to express that knowledge. The first half of the experiment was

similar to Solomon (1990) in that experts, intermediates, and novices were told to

describe similar and dissimilar wines using a list of wine descriptors that was given to

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them (similar and dissimilar here means variation by grape type. So two merlots would

be similar, while a merlot and a cabernet sauvignon would be dissimilar). Intermediates

were included to attempt and capture the acquisition of expertise. The wine descriptors

given to the subjects were ranked on a three-tier system. Tier 3 represented highly

specific terms, like “orange,” that included the traits of Tier 2 and Tier 1. Tier 2 would

then contain a less specific term such as “citrus,” and Tier 1 would be even less specific

with a term like, “fruit.” Solomon found, in support of Lawless (1984), that experts used

far more Tier 3 terms than intermediates, who in turn, used more Tier 3 terms that

novices (experts used 64 Tier 3 terms, intermediates 46, and novices used 28). By now,

this result should hardly be surprising. Experts are able to use more specific terms

because they have been trained and exposed to far greater amount of wine descriptors

than novices. What is interesting, however, is that Solomon used a regression analysis to

indicate that both experts and non-experts descriptions were the same for similar wines. For example, both experts and non-experts described the Gewürztraminer grape type as

being floral, the only difference being that experts used a more specific (Tier 3) version

of floral. This is intriguing because in the second part of his experiment where experts

and non-experts were asked to group similar wines, Solomon found that experts’

explicitly grouped wines together via grape typ,e while non-experts grouped wines

together using more non-orthogonal features such as, sweetness. Non-experts were not

even aware of using grape type as a feature to classify wines. How then, were non-

experts able to separate wines via grape types when describing them? This seems to

indicate that while non-experts do not have explicit knowledge of grape type as a means

to classify wine, they have a subconscious ability to separate wines via grape types when

describing taste. A possible explanation is that novices already have a subconscious

conceptual idea of how wines should be tasted and classified. Learning “wine talk” over

time provides these novices with the necessary tools to transform a subconscious

conception of taste, into an explicit and conscious knowledge.

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An unconventional approach in determining if language helps taste is looking at

the role of language in smell. Because smell is such a big determinant in taste, no

discussion of language and taste would be complete without considering the role of

language in smell. Hughson and Boakes (2002) studied the role of language in experts’

ability to recall domain-specific information. In the study, an expert generated sensory

descriptions for six common Australian wine varieties. The sensory descriptions were

then separated into color, nose (smell), and palate, along with a fourth “shuffled”

category in which random descriptions were combined to produce meaningless

descriptions. For two trials, three descriptions (taste + nose + palate) were displayed for

five seconds, for a total of 18 descriptions per trial. For another two trials, the same

procedure was done but with “shuffled” descriptions. The participants, a group of expert

and novice wine tasters, were then asked at the end of the trial to recall and write down as

many descriptions they could remember. As expected, experts outperformed novices in

remembering the sensory descriptors. However, experts actually performed worse than

novices in remembering the “shuffled” descriptors. Novices remembered around the

same, low number of actual descriptors and “shuffled” descriptors. Language about

sensory descriptions seems to help experts only when combined in a meaningful fashion. When combined in a random and meaningless way, this actually hurts experts’ short-term

ability to recall taste and smell. This can be due to familiarization of certain type of

sensory descriptors. As experts are exposed over and over again to certain, “correct”

combinations of wine descriptors, it becomes easier to remember these descriptors and

harder to remember ones that are never used. For novices, this is not a problem because

they are not over exposed to wine descriptors, thus whether a descriptor is “good” or

“bad” makes little difference to them when asked to recall. Of course language isn’t

helping the novices at all, but it isn’t hurting them in the way that it does experts. We

can see that knowledge of wine descriptors helps experts in a certain area, but impairs

them in others.

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Language hurts taste

Much of the literature that argues for the view that language hurts taste draw from

the concept of verbal overshadowing (Schooler and Engslter-Schooler 1990). Verbal

overshadowing was originally the negative affect of verbal descriptions on visual

perception, but the studies that follow apply the same concept to taste.

In a 1996 study by Melcher J. and Schooler J., it has been demonstrated that

verbal overshadowing only affects novice wine drinkers, leaving expert wine drinkers

relatively unaffected. The study was unique in that it tested non-wine drinkers, novice

wine drinkers (called “untrained wine drinkers” in the study), and trained wine experts,

rather than the typical expert vs. novice groups. Melcher and Schooler operated off the

previous theory that verbal overshadowing occurs when perceptual expertise exceeds

verbal expertise. In the experiment, participants tasted one target wine and then

participated in either a non-verbal exercise (solving a moderately difficult crossword

puzzle) or a verbal exercise (asked to describe the taste of the wine in great detail). Then

after four minutes, an array of four different wines (including the target wine) was

presented to the participant. The participant was then asked to pick the target wine to the

best of his/her ability. Only non-trained wine drinkers (novices) should impairment in

wine recognition after verbalization. This supports the theory that verbal overshadowing

occurs when perceptual expertise exceeds verbal expertise. Novice wine drinkers have

an adequate perceptual knowledge about wine (due to their occasional drinking), but do

not have the proper “wine talk” to supplement the perceptual knowledge. We can see

that verbalization hurts novices’ ability to taste, more specifically, their memory of taste. However, if verbalization hurts novices and not experts, there must be some point in a

wine taster’s career where verbal overshadowing no longer hurts taste. That is, where

verbal expertise catches up to perceptual expertise. This lends support to the hypothesis

that language can both hurt and help taste depending on individual.

Following the same vein, Latour et. al. (2010) conducted an experiment that both

supports Melcher and Schooler’s (1996) claim that verbal overshadowing hurts novices,

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and provides alternative explanations as to why experts seem to be immune to the affects

of verbal overshadowing. Latour et. al. (2010) used a method called “post experience

advertising paradigm.” Following the results of (Deighton 1984) which claimed that post

experience advertising can impair memory, Latour et. al. (2010) first had untrained wine

drinkers drink a target wine. Afterwards, they were exposed to misleading cross-modal

sensory terms. What they found was that untrained wine drinkers will accept most any

sensory terms given to them, even if it is misleading. One participant said, “It was

helpful to know how the producer described the wine so I could look for those aspect in

my tasting experience.” Fiore et. al. (2012) found that individuals would often label

flavors as a strategy for short-term memory. That is to say, it is much easier committing

something with a label to memory. Latour et. al. (2010) showed that untrained wine

tasters will use misleading sensory descriptions to label their taste experience, thereby

tampering and hurting their ability to taste. However, because experts already have a

verbal skill that matches their perceptual skill, they have no need to search for labels to

describe a taste. Latour et. al. (2010) also claims that experts escape verbal

overshadowing because they are able to use more concrete and specific terms when

describing wine compared to novices (Lawless 1984). Concrete terms such as

“pineapple” and “lemon,” are less likely to be distorted by verbalization than general

terms used by novices such as, “tastes good.” However, it seems that experts’ ability to

use more concrete terms is a result of a training that has allowed their verbal skills to

catch up to their perceptual skills. Once again strengthening the idea the verbal

overshadowing occurs when perceptual abilities exceed verbal abilities.

Parr et. al. (2002) conducted an experiment which demonstrated that experts’

greater knowledge of language does not make them any better than novices at describing

smells. Instead of claiming that language hurts novices and not experts, this study

actually claims the opposite: that language may help early on, but it may hurt with an

individuals increasing expertise (Reisberg 1997). Parr et. al. (2002) had a group of wine

experts and novices smell 12 different kinds of wines for 45 seconds with a 30 second

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break in between each wine. After smelling one wine, the participants were asked to

describe the wine as specifically as possible. A 10-minute break followed in which the

participants were invited to talk about their experience with wine. Then, 24 different

kinds of wine were brought out, including the 12 previously used wines. Both the expert

and novice groups were asked to smell each wine and rate on a scale of 1-5 (5 being most

confident) if that specific wine was part of the original 12. What Parr et. al. (2002)

found was that experts could identify which 12 wines were the original much better than

novices. However, novice and experts did not differ in their ability to describe smells. This suggests that greater knowledge of wine language does not benefit experts when

describing odors. Parr et. al. (2002) accounts for these results by stating that, for experts,

consistent use of a name is more important than using an “objective” name to gain an

advantage in odor recognition (Lerhner et. al. 1999). Tying perceptions to linguistic

markers may be useful for novices for when they are learning describe perceptual

sensations, but this advantage largely disappears in experts. Majid and Burenhult (2014)

offer an explanation as to why experts and novices seem to describe odors in the same

manner, despite experts having more knowledge about wines. Majid and Burenhult

(2014) found that the actual language spoken may impair your ability to express smell. They studied speakers of Jahai (a hunter-gatherer society in the Malay Peninsula) and

found that the Jahai language allows its speakers to express odors much better than

English speakers. Jahai has more than dozen different words to describe different aspects

of smell, while English has less than half that amount. Majid and Burenhult (2014) go on

to claim that the specific language spoken can severely impact your ability to describe

odors. This is a possible explanation as to why expert and novice wine tasters describe

wine odors in the same way: because the English language has a limitation on how to

describe odors.

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Thoughts and Proposed Research

The extensive literature on language and taste makes it impossible to stand

resolutely on one side. To say that language only hurts taste or that language only helps

taste seems too strong a position to take. When considering Majid and Burenhult (2014),

it seems logical to say that the English language hurts our ability to describe perceptions

because of the natural limitations of the language. However, despite its limitations,

Solomon (1990) has shown that English descriptions written by experts were more useful

in a matching task than descriptions written by novices. This indicates that knowledge of

wine descriptors must help one’s ability to taste and describe taste. Thinking about wine

language as a toolkit seems to make sense here. It is evident that novices do not have the

same knowledge as experts, and this manifests itself in novices being unable to properly

describe taste, along with being more vulnerable to the affects of verbal overshadowing.

My hypothesis relies heavily on this view of knowledge of wine descriptors as a toolkit. Knowledge of wine descriptors seem to hurt novice wine drinkers, but as they become

experts, this language helps their ability to taste in that they are better able to describe

what they are tasting and overcome memory distortions associated with verbal

overshadowing.A proposed research would follow a group of English speaking non-wine drinkers

as they transitioned from novices, to experts. Ideally, participants would be individuals

who were novice wine drinkers but were preparing themselves to become wine experts. A problem I had with the literature was that the definitions between novice and expert for

each study were different. This made it very difficult to compare results across studies. For example, Lehrer (1975) found that expert descriptions of wines were useless in a

matching task. However, her “experts” were people who drank wine more than once a

week. Lawless (1984) repeated this same experiment with experts who had been

members of a long standing wine club for a number of years and got drastically different

results. For my study, I found Solomon’s (1990) qualifications of experts to be

satisfying: any individual who was either professionally involved with wine or members

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of a long-standing wine tasting society. A person would be considered a novice until

they met the above criteria. The study would have a description component and

matching component. In the description portion, the participant would be asked to first

read a short, misleading list of 15 wine descriptors without being told the list was

misleading (misleading here meaning that none of the descriptors on the list would be

used to describe the target wine). After a 5-minute interval period where the subject

would talk about his/her experience with wine, he/she would be asked to taste a target

wine and describe it in a way that would allow others to identify the target wine. This

description would be compared to a description written by a wine expert to see how

accurate the participant’s description of the taste was. Then, following a 10-minute break

in which the subject’s palate would be cleared (via eating bread or other similar means),

the target wine would be brought out with three other similar wines (similar here meaning

of the same grape type). The subject would then have to guess the correct target wine

after a tasting session. This experiment would be conducted once per four months, each

time with a different target wine, until the individual (who started as a novice wine taster)

met the criteria of wine expertise as stated above. According to my hypothesis, when

first starting the experiment, novices would be hurt by language and subject to verbal

overshadowing due to the misleading list, causing an inaccurate description of the target

wine by using descriptors that were provided on the list. This is based on the theory that

novices are more susceptible to verbal overshadowing because their perceptual skill

exceeds their verbal skills (Melcher and Schooler 1996). As the novice trained and

gained more knowledge about wine and wine descriptors, they would be less subject to

verbal overshadowing, and their knowledge of “wine language” would help their taste of

the wine, allowing them to write more accurate descriptions. Similarly, novices would be

unable to guess the target wine correctly during the matching component. When they

have received adequate training, the novices would be able to consistently pick the

correct target wines. If the results of this study showed that participants were able to pick

the target wine during the same time that they were able to write accurate descriptions,

then there would strong evidence for language as evolving from hurting an individual’s

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ability to taste, to helping them. Even if the success of the matching component did not

correlate with the success of the description component, as long as the results showed the

subject’s improvement over time in describing wines, that would point to language as

hurting or helping an individual depending on their skill level. We know that the results

would not show the opposite (participants getting worse at describing wine and matching

as time went on) because experts have shown an accurate ability to describe wines and

pick target wines from a group of similar ones (Melcher and Schooler 1996, Solomon

1997). However, if this were the case, then it could be argues that greater knowledge of

wine descriptors only ever hurts an individual’s ability to taste. If participants showed no

improvement at all over the course of the study, then greater knowledge of wine

descriptors would have neither helped nor hurt them. This is different than just providing

a novice with a term of wine descriptors used by experts and asking them to describe a

wine (Solomon 1990 Experiment 2). If a list is presented at the time of the study,

novices are not familiar with the terms and the tastes associated to each term. This is not

remotely close to the knowledge that experts have. Experts have been trained over time

to associate each term closely with a taste. The proposed study gives novices time to

obtain that same knowledge of wine descriptors as experts. Conclusion

While there are many experiments that show that language either helps or hurts

taste, there are few experiments that attempt to bridge the gap between novice and expert. It’s shown that language hurt novices, as evidence by verbal overshadowing (Melcher

and Schooler 1996), but it’s also shown that language helps taste by giving experts in

giving them a more descriptive and analytical way in which to describe their taste

(Lawless 1984). What’s missing is how language affects individuals as they make the

transition from novice to experts. Without knowledge of how language affects those in

the “grey area” between novice and expert, it is impossible to say with absolute certainty

that knowledge of wine descriptors hurts or helps taste. The best hypothesis that can be

made right now is to say that language both hurts and helps. Even if future studies

closely examines how language affects those transitioning from novice to expert, the best

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hypothesis may still be that language can both help and hinder an individual’s ability to

taste.

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