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Does music affect the taste of wine?

Long, long ago in a valley far, far away—well, Napa actually— how far away it is depends on where you live. It’s a long, long way from South Africa for instance, or New Zealand. Not so much from Fairfax.

Anyway, long, long ago in a valley far, far way, I tasted a miracle.

Truth be told, I had tasted miracles before but I didn’t see this one coming.

My brother Bill had gotten together with the conductor of the Napa Valley Orchestra and they had created a seminar on music’s effect on the taste of wine. They were giving them here and there to disbelieving audiences which in every case walked out of the building more confused about the basic nature of the universe than they were when they walked in.

Even wines have favorite songs. Wines, like music, are always changing—even while you are drinking them. When two people get to talking about a particular wine—you know, roses, crushed gravel, hints of the leather smell from an old strap for the straight razor laying in the attic—they are never talking about the same wine.

By the time you’ve tasted it, it’s already changed.

Even if they both drink from the same glass, your senses are much too subtle for that.

Your body is much too subtle for that.

You dear reader, are much too subtle for that.

In that far away valley, my brother and the symphony conductor played four different musical pieces for each wine we tasted.

Here’s the miracle:

The same wine tasted differently when different music was played.

Selections ranged from Mozart to Metallica. Haydn (friend of Mozart and tutor of Beethoven, not to mention creator of the first piano trio) makes the wine taste better. So does his most famous pupil, Beethoven.

Metallica and Nirvana not so much. They make it taste worse. These are just a couple of examples but it should give you the idea. I do wonder how the Mormon Tabernacle Choir would do, but alas, I have no data on them or U2 either.

There are endless combinations. I’m just guessing, but I’m pretty sure Twisted Sister won’t improve that nice little Merlot you like so much, but I haven’t actually tested it. Chances are Perry Como might help but no one knows who he was anymore so that’s not likely.

What wine goes with Johnny B. Goode?

Pshaw you say, silly, silly, silly. Physics is physics, Larry. Can’t be true. Must just be your imagination.

Well, actually…no. What it is, is Vibrations. Are Vibrations. Whatever. Cymatics don’t ‘ya know? Why am I suddenly overwhelmed with a need to sing old Beach Boy songs?

Cymatics are the patterns and shapes formed in different media, like wine (or iron shavings) for instance, by vibrations. I have seen photos taken with an electron microscope where the shape of molecules in different wines are changed by different music, but since I can’t really say if they are accurate or not, I’ll just leave whatever the Rolling Stones are doing to your Carignan’s personal molecules to your imagination.

So, what to think? Play the music and the taste changes. But, why? Do the molecules in the wine actually reorganize themselves when exposed to the vibrations of music? Or, is it just that the emotion that is evoked by the music changes the way you feel and way you feel changes your perception of the wine? Or, is the whole thing just your imagination?

Emotional pairings of wine and music

There are people who charge lots of money to pair music with expensive wines based strictly on their imagination and emotional reaction. Wine-music curators as it were.

Author Vicki Denig writes in “Vine Pair” about a December evening in New York when the host provided a concert pianist playing a 1915 piece by Claude Debussy called “Etude Pour les Octaves” while sipping on a 1957 Coulon Chateauneuf de Pape. The Coulon family has made Chateauneuf-du-Pape for eight generations in France.

Lively conversation followed about the effect of the music on the wine but not the scientific kind of conversations—Denig writes, “There is a profound depth to it, one that you don’t come across every day. I can’t help but notice that that same complexity, depth, and life are also apparent in the unconventional chords of the piece...the notes transition from soft and supple to aggressive and meaty, just like the nuances of the wine in the glass.”

See (https://vinepair.com/articles/pairing-music-and-wine/) if you’re interested.

Vivo in Vino was a series of concerts that paired rock bands with different wines. Why didn’t I think of that? The possibilities are endless. I wonder if they’ve tried Desi Arnaz and his Cuban Bongo Drum orchestra?

I love Denig’s article. I really feel left out for not having been there, but that’s not the kind of effect I’m talking about. That is an effect of the imagination.

Music in the vineyards

On a more scientific note, many wineries play music to the wine at all stages of its development. Some in the vineyards, others during fermentation and still others once it’s bottled.

Marie Loriot in Champagne works with Genodics (www.genodics.com), a team of horticulturalists and musicians who have developed a precise sequence of notes that they play through sound machines in the vineyards from April to September during the vines’ growing season.

The musical sequence helps the vines develop a natural defense to ESCA, a disease in French vineyards. The last five years, she’s seen a significant decline in vine sickness and dead rootstock.

It worked so well, she now plays “Beethoven’s Symphony Pastoral” to the wines aging in her cellars. Denig says it is a transcendent experience to sit there in the cold, musty underground cellar with all those great bottles vibrating to Beethoven in the dark. I, for one, believe her.

Since I’m from Texas, I’m more inclined to play Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys myself, while sipping a fine Flat Creek Estate Four Horsemen 2013 red blend from the Hill Country where I was born.

But, Beethoven is nice, too. Maybe, with a lively little Gewurtztraminer.

I hope some winery somewhere is playing Mariachi Bands’ music to the fermentation vats, because Mariachi music makes me happy. Maybe, it would make the wines happy too.

World Wine, World music

At Lotem winery in Galilee, Israeli winemaker Yonatan Koren plays music to the wines (or vines) at different stages of development. He says they played music to a wine that contained a virus and 80% of the virus disappeared.

Israel Winery uses Indian Music to improve quality

"We put spiritual music on, like Indian mantra, Tibetan mantra, Peruvian and Brazilian spiritual music, a little bit of Arabic classical music, Hebrew...” Yonatan Koren, winemaker at Koren winery in Israel.

Read more at: https://english.mathrubhumi.com/food/beverages/israel-winery-uses-indian-music-to-improve-quality-1.4057361

Some of the best wineries in Argentina and Chile use similar techniques which they call “holistic,” which in the end, is that ancient word “terroir” in France brought up to modern times. Both mean everything that surrounds the wine in its growing and development—land, people, sounds, weather, attitudes—whatever the wine is touched by during its life.

(See www.thewineshow.com, S1 Ep2, produced for British television, to see video of the interviews with Chilean and Argentinian winemakers. Also some spectacular scenery and architecture.)

At an entrance to Spa and Vineyard, Viña VIK, the water sculpture also helps maintain constant temp in cellar where music is played to the wine as it ages.

Montes Winery, Chile. Gregorian chants are played in the cellar. “Our modern and mystical winery at 'La Finca de Apalta', was designed under Feng Shui principals, ensuring harmony in a positive atmosphere, canalizing positive energy so they could influence on every stage of the process of winemaking.” (https://www.monteswines.com/en/)

Vines of Quicksilver

I haven’t heard anyone talk about quicksilver since I was a kid—not the band with the twin guitars and all—I mean the real stuff. Quicksilver is liquid Mercury. The only metal that is liquid at normal temperatures. You push one part and the other part squiggles away.

You just can’t grab the stuff. It is in constant movement, it’s never the same, changing whenever you interact with it. Wine is like that when you are listening to music.

Seems to me, that those people up in Napa Valley listening to my brother’s seminars tasted a miracle much more interesting than changing water into wine.

It was changing wine into music.

Thanks for coming. Ya’ll take care now.

(Fade to black. Sounds of Willie Nelson singing “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” to a dark cellar stacked with endless rows of aging wine barrels.)