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have met many wine snobs who think they know everything there is to know about anything but is this really true?
Well according to a Yale professor, anyone who drinks wine might have a slight advantage when it comes to mental tasks.
His theory states that tasting wine is one of the most complex tasks anyone can do. He touts that understanding the tastes of wine is more mentally complicated than solving advanced mathematical problems or trying to understand the complexity of a Bach concerto.
In his recently published book, “Neuroenology: How the Brain Creates the Taste of Wine”, Gordon Shepherd even argues that if you drink wine while listening to Bach and solving a math problem all at the same time, your intelligence is closer to that of Albert Einstein than it ever will be doing anything else in life.
Now, these are some powerful statements, and I just wonder how much wine Shepherd drinks and just how snobby he might be, but he has a lot of facts to support his thesis in his book.
For example, he states: “You don’t just put wine in the mouth and leave it there; you move it about and then swallow it, which is a very complex motor act.” I think this statement is correct because I know after a few glasses I have trouble remembering to close my mouth before I swallow.
Expanding upon his theory – I wonder if eating a sandwich also makes you smarter – because you have to open, close, chew and swallow all at the same time. Maybe after breakfast, I will see if I feel smarter or not.
But the main premise of his book is that the brain actually has to create flavors and that they don’t really exist in wine. I think our buddy Shepherd might have done too much experimentation to conclude this. I guess the wonderful flavors of the lasagna we just made don’t exist either and they were all make-believe.
Well, we want to put his theory to the test – we encourage you to come to visit us in the tasting room and we will see if you feel smarter after a glass of wine or not. I think this test meets the entire scientific rigor required to support Shepherds thesis.
But in reality, we have a bunch of wines that are on End of Vintage and will sell out quickly, so the smartest thing to do is to stock up on what you like – because if you don’t, you might feel really stupid when it is gone.
Cheers,