|
Are
reductionist approaches useful for understanding wine?
Reductionism, the splitting
down of a system into its component parts, and then studying
these in isolation, has been a tremendously useful way of doing
science. Most science is in fact done this way, but researchers
are now beginning to realise that what the philosophers of
science have been saying for a while – that there are limits
to reductionism – is actually true. Reductionist science has
allowed biologists to unravel the human genome. But making sense
of this genetic code is another matter altogether, a process
that will require more than reductionist approaches. And while
neurobiologists have uncovered in minute details the working of
the nerve cells in the brain, how much does this tell us about
consciousness?
In a similar vein, how
useful are reductionist approaches in yielding understanding
about wine? Advances in wine flavour chemistry mean that we now
have a large body of knowledge about many of the specific
chemical components that are important in wine flavour. However,
doubts are being expressed in certain quarters about the
usefulness of this knowledge, and whether this is a fruitful
avenue of research for improving wine quality.
Why is this? It is because
wine quality is what is known as an ‘emergent’ property. It
is a characteristic of the whole system—all the various
components of the wine working together to yield a sensory
experience that is not evident from studying these components in
isolation. Let’s imagine you have spent years honing your
analytical skills and are expert in identifying specific aroma
and taste sensations in wine. You could write a list for me of
all the compounds you can spot in a particular wine, and
demonstrate that they are actually there by analytical chemistry
techniques. But does this really tell me much about this wine,
and the experience I will have with it?
Bear in mind that the
sensory experience of wine depends on both that nature of the
wine and the physiological and mental response of the taster to
this wine. The understanding of wine yielded by chemical
analysis is just one part of a complex picture, and our brains
don’t work in a similar way to analytic chemistry devices such
as a gas chromatograph or mass spectrometer. When we taste wine
we are doing much, much more than chemical analysis. This is
quite a complicated concept, but it is an important one.
Trained sensory analysis of
wine is useful in that it facilitates a way of measuring, in a
scientific and statistically analysable way, some of the
properties of wine. But in reality it is rather crude and there
is noise in the system, introduced by inter-individual variance
in perception, taster skill and the difficulty of expressing
flavour sensations in words. Sensory analysis is a vital tool
for wine research, but it is a blunt, limited tool when it comes
to telling us useful information about what really matters in a
wine.
 In
the mid-1990s Vinovation’s Clark
Smith expressed
some of these ideas in a witty, thoughtful and highly
controversial article in Vineyard
and Winery Management, entitled ‘Does UC-Davis have a
theory of deliciousness?’ [the figure to the right is Smith's
spoof of the Wine Aroma Wheel from UCD.] In this he takes the
Department of Viticulture and Enology at the
University
of California at
Davis
to task for failing to recognize a 'paradigm
shift' that has taken place in the world of wine surrounding
definitions of wine quality. In essence, he suggests that Davis
was stuck in a reductionist rut. He advocates a
fusion of the Davis analytical approach, often responsible for
clean but dull wines, with an ‘older, visceral, holistic
method of assessment’, to produce an integrated view of what
makes wine ‘delicious’. Smith uses an analogy. ‘I find
myself facing similar dilemmas in the health industry. I’m in
pretty good health; I just want advice on how to live to be 100.
My doctor, schooled in western medicine, checks my blood
pressure, cholesterol, bilirubin and so forth, and tells me to
come back when I’m sick. He thinks wellness is the absence of
disease. So I try an acupuncturist. I find out he’s got a
theory of wellness. He looks me over, gives me a tune-up with
the needles and some herbs, makes some useful suggestions. I
feel good. I ask him for some advice on prostate cancer and it
turns out he doesn’t know what disease is. Just as western
medicine has no conception of wellness, UC Davis offers no
theory of deliciousness. What it does offer is just as vital.’
He concludes, ‘the
Davis
approach, like Western medicine, is analytic, and
their counterpoints are holistic. What we need is a synthesis
that integrates both approaches.’
One of the problems has been
that scientists notions of ‘improving wine quality’ have
been at odds with those of people who make and drink the stuff.
Consider the following scenario. One by one, scientists identify
a series of wine faults – brettanomyces, reduction, poor
sulphur dioxide usage, ‘green’ flavours and aromas, and so
on. They set about instructing winemakers about how to correct
these faults. They also identify flavour molecules that have a
positive effect, and instruct winemakers how to maximize these
by, for example, vineyard interventions, maceration techniques
or the use of specific yeast strains. The result is often a
perfect, fault free wine, but one which doesn’t excite the
senses; which fails to thrill. The weakness of the reductionist,
analytical approach is that, in Smith’s words, ‘It does not
by itself contain the tools for a sophisticated appreciation of
wines as a whole’. There are concepts that relate to the
properties of wine as a whole that are important for wine
quality, or ‘deliciousness’, but which cannot be understood
by a reductionist approach. If wine science is to progress
properly in aiding out understanding of wine quality, then it
will have to break free of the shackles of a purely reductionist,
analytic approach and seek to integrate this with a holistic
view of the wine experience. Easier said than done!
The
philosophy of wine
Back
to top
|
