What the Nose Knows - Avery Gilbert [53]
Wine-tasting tradition holds that a wine must be drunk from the correct glass: reds from a large, bulb-shaped one that tapers at the mouth, whites from a smaller version of this, or perhaps from one that isn’t tapered. The idea is that the size and shape of the glass determine how the aroma is collected and delivered to the nose, and that there is an optimal glass for each type of wine. Do these rules have a basis in fact, or are they simply the pretension of wine snobs? Only three studies have addressed the question, and the results are mixed. In one, a Mondavi cabernet smelled less intense in the traditional big-bulb Bordeaux glass than in other shapes; other sensory measures (fruitiness, oakiness, etc.) were unaffected by glass shape. Another study served red and white wines in five different glasses and found that shape altered the perception of the wines on nearly every rating scale. Why such different results? For one thing, the first study was done with blindfolded subjects and the second one was not. A judge’s expectations about the wine change when the glass can be seen. A third study found that tapered, bulb-shaped glasses produced a stronger impression of wine aroma than a tulipshaped or a nontapered bulb. This effect disappeared, however, when the odor sensitivity of individual judges was taken into account. Only people with superior noses could appreciate the subtle effects of glass shape. While this will no doubt reinforce the self-regard of wine snobs, the final joke is on them. The study presented a single wine in glasses of various shapes; afterward most judges thought they had been served two or three different wines. Another triumph of the visual over the aromatic. In the final analysis, glass preferences may be nothing more than a tradition. In a similar way, I have heard French perfumers insist that their style of smelling blotter (folded lengthwise into a V-shape, and cut to a point on the end) is superior to the thin, rectangular version used by Americans. Why? Because it allows the perfume to evaporate more precisely. The world of olfaction is filled with irrational beliefs, and sometimes that’s just part of the fun.
CHAPTER 6
The Malevolence of Malodor
And when euyl substance shall putrifie,
Horrible odour is gendred therbye;
As of dragons & men that long dede be,
Theire stynche may cause grete mortalite.
—THOMAS NORTON, Ordinall of Alchimy
(late fourteenth century)
ON A LATE-SEPTEMBER SUNDAY IN 1971, I WALKED along a dusty footpath toward some oak woods near San Rafael, California. I was with a few oddly dressed friends: the men wore tights and jerkins, the women long-sleeved, flowing dresses and conical hats. I wore a Puritan robe with white collar and carried a wooden recorder. We were in a long line of costumed people stretching from a field of parked cars to the crest of a hill, where flew the pennants of the Renaissance Pleasure Faire. The wooded hills of Marin County were a congenial spot for this deliberate flight of fancy into the past.
Amid the bawdy puppet shows and the racket of tambours and sackbuts, one could almost slip into the mental habits of an earlier time. In Elizabethan England, bad-smelling air was thought to be the cause of disease. In Hamlet, Shakespeare wrote: “’Tis now the very witching time of night / When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out / Contagion to this world.” According to Simon Kellwaye in A Defensative Against the Plague, written in 1593, illness results from “some stinking doonghills, filthie and standing pooles of water and unsavery smelles.” In a time before indoor plumbing, when open sewers were the norm, there were enough “stinking doonghills” to make everyone feel threatened by disease. For Elizabethans, however, odor was both a cause and a cure. They believed that good odors could ward off disease. This led them to hang spicefilled pomanders from necklaces and to fumigate their houses by burning incense, sulfur, and gunpowder. Beneficial