UNDER THE SURFACE | Synaesthesia: the sommelier’s secret weapon

Tasting notes needn't necessarily be what you smell, taste and see in the glass – they can also be what you visualise in your head. Marianna Hunt, winner of this year's award for short-form writing at the 67 Pall Mall Global Wine Communicator Awards, delves into the world of synaesthesia in a piece that originally appeared on decanter.com

When sommelier Jaime Smith tastes a Châteauneuf-du Pape, he sees blocky, heavy red and blue pentagons approaching him – clumsily bumping together. Smith, the first director of wine at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas and twice named best sommelier in America by Food & Wine magazine, has synaesthesia, a neurological condition that means that, when one of your senses is stimulated, you also experience another.

There are many different types of synaesthesia – from seeing colours when you hear music to associating numbers with different colours and even tasting flavours when reading certain words. Scientists estimate that it affects between 2% and 4% of the population. Gustatory-visual synaesthesia, where people experience colours, shapes or textures when they taste, is even rarer – affecting about 0.002% of the population (or one in every 50,000 people), according to researchers at Bournemouth University.

‘Wines with certain acidity levels, alcohol levels, sugar levels do different things to you and create different shapes,’ says Micu, who was the youngest ever Master Sommelier when he qualified aged 28, in 2012, and is currently working at the World Equestrian Centre in Florida. ‘Wines with the highest sugar and most alcohol are usually the most round. Those with the most acidity have the most angularity – like a firework shape.’

For Smith – who experiences tastes and smells in a ‘box’ in his mind, where shapes enter then leave – acidity generally shows as a coloured stripe. The longer and brighter the acidity, the longer the line. Oak ageing, meanwhile, adds a textural fuzziness to his shapes, while high alcohol appears as a dripping precipitation from above.

For Gilian Handelman, vice president of education at Jackson Family Wines in California (and another synaesthete), wines have sounds, too. ‘You get swish-swish wines – things like a high-acid Pinot Grigio or Assyrtiko – and gloop-gloop wines, which are more viscous – Viogniers and Californian Chardonnay,’ Handelman explains. ‘The noise depends on the body, the fruits and the ripeness.’

Synaesthesia even influences how she pairs wine with food – using the colours, shapes and frequencies of both wine and food to find the right matches. ‘If I’ve got salmon with capers and parsley – capers are “HERE” [she makes a high-pitched trill similar to one she made earlier when describing Sauvignon Blanc], so I know I need to pair it with a high-acid white,’ she adds. 

It can also prove helpful when trying to explain wines to customers. ‘All of the time I’m using shapes and hand gestures to describe wines,’ Micu says. ‘I feel people understand better when I describe textures and shapes than when I use more traditional tasting notes.’ Does he think that people would engage more with wine labels if they had colours and shapes as well as tasting notes (a thing Handelman has been exploring)? ‘It could be interesting – though people might not be ready for it.’ Smith is sceptical: ‘People won’t understand if I say, “This is an ultra-blue wine from Otago”. I try to keep it simple.’

Some research suggests that, rather than being a binary condition that people either have or don’t have, synaesthesia is more of a spectrum. Does this mean that we could all learn something from these sommeliers and their ‘superpowers’? All three have run classes where they taste wines and encourage attendees to draw shapes based on what they experience, and often people are able to visualise what they’re tasting. ‘There will always be a large group with similar pictures,’ says Smith. ‘It’s hard to explain. I thought maybe I was influencing it so I stopped talking about the wine beforehand – but people still came out with very similar drawings.’

Studies also suggest that synaesthetes are more creative and have a better memory than the general population. For Maggie Harrison, an Oregon-based winemaker, her synaesthesia (which means she sees colours when she hears numbers and days of the week) isn’t a tasting superpower but a memory one. She uses it when blending – which involves blind tasting more than 100 samples from different plots (each represented only by a number) and trying different blended combinations. By associating each numbered sample and each blend with a colour, Harrison can immediately remember its characteristics when blending.

The enhanced recall aspect of synaesthesia is another thing we may be able to emulate. A trial carried out by researchers at the University of East London found that, when non-synaesthetes were taught to associate certain letters with certain colours, they were able to remember words more easily. But be careful what you wish for. A synaesthesia superpower comes with downsides, too. ‘I can pick up all the smells in the room. As a child, I used to become overwhelmed,’ Smith says. ‘Chemical smells are really jagged to me. Even now, with my wife, we have to talk about what perfumes she buys because some trigger me.’

The complete list of winners from this year's 67 Pall Mall Global Wine Communicator Awards can be seen here

This piece appears courtesy of Decanter magazine, which is kindly offering Members of 67 Pall Mall a 20% discount on a subscription to its Premium service. To take advantage of the offer, Members should email us on marketing@67pallmall.com and we will provide you with a code to access the discount

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