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A scientific study from Spain has analysed the brain activity of sommeliers and amateurs when tasting and describing wine. The researchers from the Basque Centre for Cognition, Brain and Language found that sommeliers were not only better at recognising differences between wines, but were also better at translating these into complex verbal descriptions.
In the study entitled "Sniffing out meaning: changes in the chemosensory and semantic neural networks in sommeliers", 28 adult volunteers were examined, divided into trained sommeliers and occasional consumers. Both groups were given four different Spanish wines to taste and were asked to describe the complexity of each wine while their brains were scanned using magnetic resonance imaging.
The researchers found that structural differences exist in the brains of professionals and private wine connoisseurs and that different regions of the brain are activated during tasting. The amateurs utilise their frontal cortex more, which indicates greater effort. The professionals were able to better activate the brain regions responsible for language and flavour and establish more neuronal connections between the two. This enables the brain to perform more complex tasks.
The authors of the study therefore concluded that continuous training in wine tasting probably modulates the tasting and language regions in the brain. This leads to better flavour recognition and description skills. This can be seen as a sign of higher intelligence.
(al / Source: drinksbusiness.com)