How Wine Connects Us

We’ve been told for years that wine can be good for us in moderation. Mostly, this is attributed to antioxidant qualities of polyphenols. The more antioxidants, particularly resveratrol, the experts say, the better. Big, heavy reds are the way to go.

Rising interest in gut health over the last few years has also lead researchers to look into the possible benefits of wine for gut health. Polyphenols are fibrous, so likely act as prebiotics, slowing down digestion and curbing blood sugar spikes, whilst providing food for our gut microbiome. Again, we are told, the more polyphenols the better. Go big, go bold.

There’s another, often overlooked, benefit to wine consumption. For those of us who are socially anxious or awkward, the alcohol in wine can act as a social lubricant by lowering our defences and make us more open to social interaction. In doing so, we forge stronger bonds with those around us, strengthening our support network and sense of belonging. I’m not talking about getting blind drunk here: it’s more about when you’ve had just enough to make you feel a little looser and more relaxed than normal, a sign that your brain has become more plastic and open to new experiences, yet still have the ability to talk and coordinate your movements. For anyone who’s ever been to a really good dinner party with wine or any sort of alcohol involved, I’m sure you’ve borne witness to that moment when you look around the table and realise that you’re slightly lightheaded, ecstatic not only from the alcohol but also from the deep bond that’s been forged between yourself and those around you in the space of a mere few hours.

For those of us in the industry, wine has proven itself time and time again to open our hearts and homes. I’ve travelled to many parts of the world, staying with other wine industry folk, who opened their doors and shared food, wine, and a place to stay, and taught me many of the things that have come to shape my knowledge of wine. Many of them have become lifelong friends, and provided me with unforgettable, life changing experiences. I know that I’m not the only person to have experienced this. While commercial realities must necessarily be a consideration in any business, the wine industry is largely driven by passion, not profit. When people come together through the kind of shared experience that a love for wine induces, it’s almost impossible not to feel connected in a way that transcends social and cultural boundaries.

There’s also the connection that wine can forge between us and nature, acting as a visceral symbol of time and place. And there’s plenty of research that shows how important - perhaps even vital - human connection with nature is for wellbeing, at both the individual and societal levels.

Yet, I would suggest that there is an even more intrinsic, deeply personal process that takes place when we drink wine. It comes from the hedonistic pleasure of inhaling the perfume of a glass of wine, letting the flavours wash over your palate, and attuning to the lingering impressions that wine produces. It’s the act of being in the moment, a mindfulness that takes place when we focus deeply on the sensations produced by drinking a glass of wine.

Mindfulness, increased awareness in the moment, has been receiving much attention from researchers over the last few years,  mainly for its ability to help alleviate stress. But, as Gretchen Rubin points out, there’s more to our sensory experience than simply stress alleviation: our senses are a fundamental part of our perception of life. They exist for the purpose of informing us of what is happening around us, in doing so shaping our inner world. Our conscious experience, how we feel, is not a product of purely what happens in our brain, it is the gestalt sum of our entire being.

Taste is perhaps the most complex of our senses. We assimilate perceptions of taste from not only from the detection of flavour, but also through texture, sight, sound (as we crunch or slurp on something) and, of course, smell. When we taste properly — that is, concentrate on the sensory experience of it — we use brain structures that regulate our attention. We are mindfully present in the moment, paying heed to each of our senses, as well as our reactions to them. They give us clues not only about the physical construction of whatever we are eating or drinking but also, about the aesthetic experience that we are having.

What do I mean by that? Drinking wine has been shown to reward us with an aesthetic experience that resembles our appreciation of other forms of art, evoking intertwined sensory, emotional, and cognitive responses, and prompting a perception of beauty. Appreciation of beauty, psychologists say, is a malleable character trait that can be defined as acknowledgement of the inherent value of the way in which different elements come together to make a unified whole, coupled with a change in emotional state. There are certain things, like fractal patterns, that all humans appreciate as beautiful, although some people find some fractals more or less appealing than others. This may be due to perceptual adaptation, the role that our socio-cultural and environmental context plays on our perceptions and values, both consciously and subconsciously. What we appreciate as beautiful can change over time, as our context and values change. We can also gain greater appreciation of the beauty of things, including wine, through deliberate increased exposure, especially through experiences with an immersive quality, or lose it if we don’t regularly expose ourselves to such experiences.

However, appreciating wine is not simply about drinking it. We appreciate wine more when we have a greater conceptual understanding of it. This depends not so much on being the best taster to start off with but rather, on having context around the wine. Stories, though they come in different forms, are in their essence explanations of cause and effect that allow us to make meaning of life.  A winemaking tutorial, chatting with a winemaker or having a go at backyard winemaking yourself can all help you better understand each of the elements that come together to influence the final wine, the story behind it. We can then reinforce our conceptual understanding with perceptual understanding, such as a guided tasting or even just taking the time to sip slowly and think about what we’re experiencing and understanding how each element has come together. In tasting this way, we are better able to make meaning of what we are tasting. Context and perception work together, in a self-reinforcing feedback loop, to enhance appreciation of what ends up in our glass.

I feel that it’s important to reiterate here that this is not simply a cognitive exercise. We don’t just think of something as beautiful: we feel it intrinsically, at a psychosomatic level. According to psychologists, appreciation of beauty elicits self-transcendent emotions of awe, admiration and elevation, which are kind of like inbuilt wonder drugs. Recent research shows that they facilitate improvements in brain function, physical health, well-being and increased prosocial behaviour — the acts of generosity and kindness upon which healthy societies are built. Human wellbeing, at both the personal and collective levels, depends on our regularly experiencing emotions that elevate our mood. Hand-in-hand with positive thoughts, emotions regulate our physiology and produce our conscious state.

One last piece of information I feel is worth imparting: fermentation volatilises flavonoids, heightening our olfactory perception of the flavour molecules in fermented foods and drinks. Smell is actually the dominant sense that we use when “tasting”. Taste itself, and all of the other senses, play second fiddle. Incredibly, we have around 4 million olfactory cells in our nose, whereas the average adult has only around 10 000 taste buds. Each of our olfactory cells is able to detect only specific aromas, which fit into them like a key into a lock. Some of them act as a substrate for the translation of only one aroma, whereas other may decode multiple aromas, giving us the ability to detect a staggering 1 trillion different odours. Our sense of smell is far more nuanced than our sense of taste. Additionally, our olfactory bulb has direct connections to the amygdala and hippocampus, two areas of our brain involved in emotion and memory. As a result, smell has the capacity to conjure emotion and memory more vividly and more intensely than other senses. If we are to truly to get the most mindful experience with wine, we need to pay to attention to what we smell at least as much, if not more, as we do to what our palate detects.

I’m not trying to suggest that wine tasting is the answer to our global mental health crisis, nor that it’s for everyone. There are plenty of reasons for many people to drink less or not at all. But we know that wine can bring us closer together, and help us forge bonds with one another and with the natural world. And, for those of us who find ourselves unable to meditate or who want to find a new way to quiet our minds to be present and self-aware in the moment, the sensory experience of tasting wine presents an opportunity to do exactly that. This means that the best wines to drink are not necessarily the biggest and boldest but, for the purpose of mindfulness at least, the most subtle and intricate. The wines that captivate our senses and our mind in such a way that we find ourselves immersed in them, both their story and the sensory experiences that they evoke.