Starbursts
Do you taste wine with your mouth or with your nose ?
Well, both actually. A lot of people underestimate the importance of the nose in wine tasting. Not convinced ? Here is a little experiment for you to try. We do this a lot with our wine tastings.
Go to your local sweet shop and buy a packet of Starbursts or some other very fruity chewy sweeties.
Unwrap one of those delicious sweets
Hold your nose so that you can’t breathe out of it and more importantly, you can’t smell anything. [by the way, you might want to try this at home 
]
Pop the sweet into your mouth (while still holding your nose completely closed)
Chew the sweet for 5 to 10 seconds and take note of what you are tasting. Not much I bet.
Now, let go of your nose
What happens ?
You will get a sudden massive rush of flavour !!
That’s because the tongue can only detect a limited range of tastes. They are
- Sweet
- Sour
- Salt
- Bitter
- Savoury
In contrast to this, the nose can detect hundreds and hundreds of different flavours. You know when you have a cold ? (or worse still man flu !). Nothing tastes good. Everything is flavourless and bland. It’s the same thing here. It’s all down to the nasal passage linking the nose to the mouth. It allows flavours to be detected when you eat or drink something.
So the next time you are drinking your glass of wine, give it some nose time.
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