Taste awakening: bitterness and balance
The Institut des Sciences de la Vigne du Vin and INNO'VIN invite you to the 5th Séminaire Vins & Consommateurs on the theme of "Awakening taste: bitterness and balance".
Sophie NIcklaus, Director of Research at INRA Dijon, will introduce the seminar, which will be followed by a tasting led by renowned oenologist Jean-Claude Berrouet.
Sophie Nicklaus
"Food behaviour and preferences are learnt, essentially during the first years of life. Learning about the taste of food (flavours and aromas) can take place as early as pregnancy and lactation, through exposure of the foetus and then the infant to the flavours of food ingested by the mother. Beyond this period of discovery of aromas, the most important time for learning to eat is probably during the transition from milk-fed food to 'adult' food, i.e. at the start of dietary diversification, with the discovery of all the sensory properties (textures, flavours, aromas) and nutritional properties (energy value).
Sophie Nicklaus, INRA Research Director at the Centre des Sciences du Goût et de l'Alimentation in Dijon, is working on the conditions for this early learning, as well as on the factors likely to influence it, by analysing the influence of the sensory properties of food, such as flavours, aromas and textures.
During her presentation, Sophie Nicklaus will talk to us about learning to taste bitterness.
Jean-Claude Berrouet
"The organoleptic quality of a wine is based not only on its aromatic typicity but also on its gustatory character and, in particular, the balance of flavours.
the balance of flavours. Although there are few words to describe this heterogeneity, there is nonetheless a continuum of sensations that will enable us to characterise and define the balance of wines.
The gustatory balance of wines is based in particular on bitter and sweet flavours. But while it's easy to
But if it's easy to grasp the sensation of sweetness from an early age, how do you teach a child to taste bitterness? Honey is perhaps the only product that will teach them to appreciate the balance between bitterness and sweetness. Later on, learning about the bitterness of wines can be studied through more complex products such as tea of different origins.
Jean-Claude Berrouet, oenologist, proposes a triple tasting to illustrate our scientific and hedonic questions.
our scientific and hedonic questions.
