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Language and Taste:
Does knowledge of wine descriptors help or hurt people in tasting
wine?
Andrew Lee
Psych 334
Dr. Dedre Gentner

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Introduction
Language and taste is a domain in which a lot of work has been done in the past
20 to 30 years, especially in regards to wine. Wine is a promising topic of research when
it comes to studying the affects of language on taste because it is not completely clear
that we all share the same perceptual experiences when we drink wine. Further, the
established tradition of expert wine tasters versus novice wine drinkers allows us to more
easily study if these two groups perceive wine differently. Now why does studying the
difference in how experts taste wine versus how novices taste wine give us insight into
the affects of language on taste? One major difference between expert wine tasters and
novice wine tasters is the language in which they use to describe and talk about wine
(Solomon GE 1990, Langlois et. al. 2011). Experts are known to have far greater
knowledge about wine descriptors than that of novices. While this is quite obvious and
hardly surprising, if all that is different between experts and novices is this knowledge of
a specific lexicon, namely “wine talk,” then it is fair to say that a difference in wine
perception between these two groups can be attributed to language.
The main focus of this paper, then, is to see if greater knowledge of wine
descriptors hurts or helps people’s ability to taste wine. My hypothesis is that knowledge
of wine descriptors either helps or hurts people’s ability to taste wine depending on the
individual’s level of expertise. It is too strong of a stance to say that greater knowledge
of “wine talk” will always hurt or help one’s ability to taste wine, as some of the papers
discussed below will propose. Because the knowledge is gained gradually (learning
takes place over time and not instantly), studying the affects of language on taste over
time may show that language both helps and hurts taste depending on the knowledge of
the individual at a given time. This seems to be a much more comprehensive hypothesis
than just arguing solely for one side.
This paper will begin with a thorough examination of literature that argues for the
helpful affects of language on taste, along with studies that argue for the opposite. Then,
I will further develop the hypothesis I presented in the previous paragraph by discussing
problems and insights that the existing research provides us with. I will end by presenting

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a possible study, and talking about what the theoretical results of said study could tell us
in terms of language and taste.
Language Helps Taste
One of the cornerstone studies of language and taste research in the realm of wine
is a study conducted by Harry T. Lawless (1984). In this study, Lawless had both experts
and novices write descriptions for three wines. Then a group of participants, half of
whom were experts and half of whom were novices, matched the descriptions to each
wine to the best of their ability. Lawless found that expert wine tasters were much better
than novices in matching the expert description to all three wines. Novices were at or
below chance in matching both the expert and novice descriptions, and experts also fell
below chance in matching novice descriptions to the wines. What this tells us is that the
language that experts use contain specific wine descriptors that are useful to experts in
matching descriptions to tastes, but useless to novices in performing the same task.
Indeed, Lawless found that expert wine tasters frequently used terms that were multi-
dimensional and concrete, while novices only used single non-orthogonal terms. An
example of a concrete wine descriptor would be something like “lemon,” compared to a
non-orthogonal descriptor such as, “fruit.” In terms of wine experts then, language seems
to be helping taste. Experts are able to use a more specific lexicon to accurately describe
taste in a manner that is comprehensible to other experts.
Lawless’s findings were supported in a later study conducted by Gregg Eric
Solomon (1990). Solomon sought to improve on the matching method used by Lawless
and instead had subjects taste a wine and choose from a set of two descriptions (both
descriptions written either by experts or novices) rather than match three descriptions to
three wines. Solomon claimed that this method was more accurate than Lawless’s and
reduced game strategy during the procedure of the experiment. What Solomon found
was essentially a replication of Lawless’s results; that experts are much better than
novices at matching expert level descriptions to wines. Again, novices were below
chance when attempting to match both expert and novice descriptions to wines, and
experts were also below chance when matching novice descriptions to wines. There

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seems to be at least two questions that arise from these findings. One: why do experts
perform below chance when matching novice descriptions to wines? Solomon explains
this by saying that novice wine tasters simply do not have the language necessary to
accurately describe wines. This seems to explain why both novices and experts found the
novice descriptions to be virtually useless. Also, an interesting finding to consider is that
experts used an average of six terms to describe any given wine, while novices used an
average of three terms. The fact that experts used almost double the amount of terms as
novices is in part due to the greater lexicon that is available to experts. Here, having
greater knowledge of wine descriptors is helping experts in being able to identify,
quantify, and describe aspects of taste that are either not picked up by novices or unable
to be intelligently described by them (this is an important topic and will be discussed later
in greater detail). The second question deals with novices and their lack of expert “wine
talk.” If novices were given a list of terms that experts used to describe wines, would
they be able to identify and describe wines in a manner similar to experts? In the second
part of Solomon’s (1990) study, he attempted to answer exactly this question. A group of
expert wine tasters and a group of novice wine tasters were given a list of around 130
terms that were regularly used by experts. The thought process was that if the only thing
separating novices and experts was the lack of a proper lexicon, then perhaps providing
the lexicon to the novices would allow them to taste and describe wines like experts. The
results of the experiment turned out to be quite different. Novices often picked
combinations of terms that “experts scoffed at” (Solomon 1990). An example of such a
combination is “butterscotch” and “bitter.” To an expert, this is an impossible
combination of flavors. At surface glance, these results seem to lead to the conclusion
that language does not affect taste at all, and that experts are only better at tasting and
describing wine because they have been trained for many years to do just that. However,
the fact that the novices were hurt and confused by wine descriptors could be attributed to
their lack of training and exposure to the language. As seen in the two aforementioned
studies, wine descriptors aid experts in tasting and describing wine, at least in some

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capacity. It is possible consider then, that while wine descriptors hurt novices’ ability to
taste, somewhere along the line between novice and expert, these descriptors actually
become a benefit.
D’Alessandro et. al. (2013) also argues on the side of language as being helpful to
taste, with the view of language as a toolkit. In their experiment, D’Alessandro et. al.
(2013) had a group of expert and novice wine tasters drink and describe the quality of a
wine. This is notably different than both Lawless (1984) and Solomon (1990) in that
rather than asking the subject to pick from pre-made descriptions after tasting a wine, the
subjects were free to describe the quality of the wine in whatever manner they saw fit.
What D’Alessandro et. al. (2013) found was the experts were much more analytical than
novices in describing the quality of the wine. Similar to Lawless (1984), the experts used
more mulit-dimensional descriptors and even drew on examples outside of taste (country
of origin, brand information, etc.) to strengthen their descriptions on the quality of the
wine. Novices, on the other hand, experienced difficulty in describing quality. An
interesting point that D’Alessandro et. al. (2013) noted was that novices had a hard time
translating what they were tasting into words. Mentioned briefly in the earlier paragraph,
this brings up the question of, do novice wine tasters already have a subconscious
knowledge of wine descriptors but just lack the proper lexical training to describe tastes?
If this is the case, then language, while still helpful, is not this key to unlocking a whole
new world of wine tastes as it was made out to be in Lawless (1984) and Solomon
(1990). Rather, language would just be a tool: a tool that individuals could use to
describe a perception that already exists in their minds. Keep in mind that D’Alessandro
et. al. (2013) is still arguing that language helps taste, but just as a tool. Solomon (1997)
expands on this view of language as a toolkit by demonstrating that novice wine tasters
do indeed have a subconscious understanding of wine taste and wine descriptors, but just
lack to tools in which to express that knowledge. The first half of the experiment was
similar to Solomon (1990) in that experts, intermediates, and novices were told to
describe similar and dissimilar wines using a list of wine descriptors that was given to
them (similar and dissimilar here means variation by grape type. So two merlots would

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be similar, while a merlot and a cabernet sauvignon would be dissimilar). Intermediates
were included to attempt and capture the acquisition of expertise. The wine descriptors
given to the subjects were ranked on a three-tier system. Tier 3 represented highly
specific terms, like “orange,” that included the traits of Tier 2 and Tier 1. Tier 2 would
then contain a less specific term such as “citrus,” and Tier 1 would be even less specific
with a term like, “fruit.” Solomon found, in support of Lawless (1984), that experts used
far more Tier 3 terms than intermediates, who in turn, used more Tier 3 terms that
novices (experts used 64 Tier 3 terms, intermediates 46, and novices used 28). By now,
this result should hardly be surprising. Experts are able to use more specific terms
because they have been trained and exposed to far greater amount of wine descriptors
than novices. What is interesting, however, is that Solomon used a regression analysis to
indicate that both experts and non-experts descriptions were the same for similar wines.
For example, both experts and non-experts described the Gewürztraminer grape type as
being floral, the only difference being that experts used a more specific (Tier 3) version
of floral. This is intriguing because in the second part of his experiment where experts
and non-experts were asked to group similar wines, Solomon found that experts’
explicitly grouped wines together via grape typ,e while non-experts grouped wines
together using more non-orthogonal features such as, sweetness. Non-experts were not
even aware of using grape type as a feature to classify wines. How then, were non-
experts able to separate wines via grape types when describing them? This seems to
indicate that while non-experts do not have explicit knowledge of grape type as a means
to classify wine, they have a subconscious ability to separate wines via grape types when
describing taste. A possible explanation is that novices already have a subconscious
conceptual idea of how wines should be tasted and classified. Learning “wine talk” over
time provides these novices with the necessary tools to transform a subconscious
conception of taste, into an explicit and conscious knowledge.
An unconventional approach in determining if language helps taste is looking at
the role of language in smell. Because smell is such a big determinant in taste, no

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discussion of language and taste would be complete without considering the role of
language in smell. Hughson and Boakes (2002) studied the role of language in experts’
ability to recall domain-specific information. In the study, an expert generated sensory
descriptions for six common Australian wine varieties. The sensory descriptions were
then separated into color, nose (smell), and palate, along with a fourth “shuffled”
category in which random descriptions were combined to produce meaningless
descriptions. For two trials, three descriptions (taste + nose + palate) were displayed for
five seconds, for a total of 18 descriptions per trial. For another two trials, the same
procedure was done but with “shuffled” descriptions. The participants, a group of expert
and novice wine tasters, were then asked at the end of the trial to recall and write down as
many descriptions they could remember. As expected, experts outperformed novices in
remembering the sensory descriptors. However, experts actually performed worse than
novices in remembering the “shuffled” descriptors. Novices remembered around the
same, low number of actual descriptors and “shuffled” descriptors. Language about
sensory descriptions seems to help experts only when combined in a meaningful fashion.
When combined in a random and meaningless way, this actually hurts experts’ short-term
ability to recall taste and smell. This can be due to familiarization of certain type of
sensory descriptors. As experts are exposed over and over again to certain, “correct”
combinations of wine descriptors, it becomes easier to remember these descriptors and
harder to remember ones that are never used. For novices, this is not a problem because
they are not over exposed to wine descriptors, thus whether a descriptor is “good” or
“bad” makes little difference to them when asked to recall. Of course language isn’t
helping the novices at all, but it isn’t hurting them in the way that it does experts. We
can see that knowledge of wine descriptors helps experts in a certain area, but impairs
them in others.
Language hurts taste

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Much of the literature that argues for the view that language hurts taste draw from
the concept of verbal overshadowing (Schooler and Engslter-Schooler 1990). Verbal
overshadowing was originally the negative affect of verbal descriptions on visual
perception, but the studies that follow apply the same concept to taste.
In a 1996 study by Melcher J. and Schooler J., it has been demonstrated that
verbal overshadowing only affects novice wine drinkers, leaving expert wine drinkers
relatively unaffected. The study was unique in that it tested non-wine drinkers, novice
wine drinkers (called “untrained wine drinkers” in the study), and trained wine experts,
rather than the typical expert vs. novice groups. Melcher and Schooler operated off the
previous theory that verbal overshadowing occurs when perceptual expertise exceeds
verbal expertise. In the experiment, participants tasted one target wine and then
participated in either a non-verbal exercise (solving a moderately difficult crossword
puzzle) or a verbal exercise (asked to describe the taste of the wine in great detail). Then
after four minutes, an array of four different wines (including the target wine) was
presented to the participant. The participant was then asked to pick the target wine to the
best of his/her ability. Only non-trained wine drinkers (novices) should impairment in
wine recognition after verbalization. This supports the theory that verbal overshadowing
occurs when perceptual expertise exceeds verbal expertise. Novice wine drinkers have
an adequate perceptual knowledge about wine (due to their occasional drinking), but do
not have the proper “wine talk” to supplement the perceptual knowledge. We can see
that verbalization hurts novices’ ability to taste, more specifically, their memory of taste.
However, if verbalization hurts novices and not experts, there must be some point in a
wine taster’s career where verbal overshadowing no longer hurts taste. That is, where
verbal expertise catches up to perceptual expertise. This lends support to the hypothesis
that language can both hurt and help taste depending on individual.
Following the same vein, Latour et. al. (2010) conducted an experiment that both
supports Melcher and Schooler’s (1996) claim that verbal overshadowing hurts novices,
and provides alternative explanations as to why experts seem to be immune to the affects

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of verbal overshadowing. Latour et. al. (2010) used a method called “post experience
advertising paradigm.” Following the results of (Deighton 1984) which claimed that post
experience advertising can impair memory, Latour et. al. (2010) first had untrained wine
drinkers drink a target wine. Afterwards, they were exposed to misleading cross-modal
sensory terms. What they found was that untrained wine drinkers will accept most any
sensory terms given to them, even if it is misleading. One participant said, “It was
helpful to know how the producer described the wine so I could look for those aspect in
my tasting experience.” Fiore et. al. (2012) found that individuals would often label
flavors as a strategy for short-term memory. That is to say, it is much easier committing
something with a label to memory. Latour et. al. (2010) showed that untrained wine
tasters will use misleading sensory descriptions to label their taste experience, thereby
tampering and hurting their ability to taste. However, because experts already have a
verbal skill that matches their perceptual skill, they have no need to search for labels to
describe a taste. Latour et. al. (2010) also claims that experts escape verbal
overshadowing because they are able to use more concrete and specific terms when
describing wine compared to novices (Lawless 1984). Concrete terms such as
“pineapple” and “lemon,” are less likely to be distorted by verbalization than general
terms used by novices such as, “tastes good.” However, it seems that experts’ ability to
use more concrete terms is a result of a training that has allowed their verbal skills to
catch up to their perceptual skills. Once again strengthening the idea the verbal
overshadowing occurs when perceptual abilities exceed verbal abilities.
Parr et. al. (2002) conducted an experiment which demonstrated that experts’
greater knowledge of language does not make them any better than novices at describing
smells. Instead of claiming that language hurts novices and not experts, this study
actually claims the opposite: that language may help early on, but it may hurt with an
individuals increasing expertise (Reisberg 1997). Parr et. al. (2002) had a group of wine
experts and novices smell 12 different kinds of wines for 45 seconds with a 30 second
break in between each wine. After smelling one wine, the participants were asked to

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describe the wine as specifically as possible. A 10-minute break followed in which the
participants were invited to talk about their experience with wine. Then, 24 different
kinds of wine were brought out, including the 12 previously used wines. Both the expert
and novice groups were asked to smell each wine and rate on a scale of 1-5 (5 being most
confident) if that specific wine was part of the original 12. What Parr et. al. (2002)
found was that experts could identify which 12 wines were the original much better than
novices. However, novice and experts did not differ in their ability to describe smells.
This suggests that greater knowledge of wine language does not benefit experts when
describing odors. Parr et. al. (2002) accounts for these results by stating that, for experts,
consistent use of a name is more important than using an “objective” name to gain an
advantage in odor recognition (Lerhner et. al. 1999). Tying perceptions to linguistic
markers may be useful for novices for when they are learning describe perceptual
sensations, but this advantage largely disappears in experts. Majid and Burenhult (2014)
offer an explanation as to why experts and novices seem to describe odors in the same
manner, despite experts having more knowledge about wines. Majid and Burenhult
(2014) found that the actual language spoken may impair your ability to express smell.
They studied speakers of Jahai (a hunter-gatherer society in the Malay Peninsula) and
found that the Jahai language allows its speakers to express odors much better than
English speakers. Jahai has more than dozen different words to describe different aspects
of smell, while English has less than half that amount. Majid and Burenhult (2014) go on
to claim that the specific language spoken can severely impact your ability to describe
odors. This is a possible explanation as to why expert and novice wine tasters describe
wine odors in the same way: because the English language has a limitation on how to
describe odors.
Thoughts and Proposed Research

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The extensive literature on language and taste makes it impossible to stand
resolutely on one side. To say that language only hurts taste or that language only helps
taste seems too strong a position to take. When considering Majid and Burenhult (2014),
it seems logical to say that the English language hurts our ability to describe perceptions
because of the natural limitations of the language. However, despite its limitations,
Solomon (1990) has shown that English descriptions written by experts were more useful
in a matching task than descriptions written by novices. This indicates that knowledge of
wine descriptors must help one’s ability to taste and describe taste. Thinking about wine
language as a toolkit seems to make sense here. It is evident that novices do not have the
same knowledge as experts, and this manifests itself in novices being unable to properly
describe taste, along with being more vulnerable to the affects of verbal overshadowing.
My hypothesis relies heavily on this view of knowledge of wine descriptors as a toolkit.
Knowledge of wine descriptors seem to hurt novice wine drinkers, but as they become
experts, this language helps their ability to taste in that they are better able to describe
what they are tasting and overcome memory distortions associated with verbal
overshadowing.
A proposed research would follow a group of English speaking non-wine drinkers
as they transitioned from novices, to experts. Ideally, participants would be individuals
who were novice wine drinkers but were preparing themselves to become wine experts.
A problem I had with the literature was that the definitions between novice and expert for
each study were different. This made it very difficult to compare results across studies.
For example, Lehrer (1975) found that expert descriptions of wines were useless in a
matching task. However, her “experts” were people who drank wine more than once a
week. Lawless (1984) repeated this same experiment with experts who had been
members of a long standing wine club for a number of years and got drastically different
results. For my study, I found Solomon’s (1990) qualifications of experts to be
satisfying: any individual who was either professionally involved with wine or members
of a long-standing wine tasting society. A person would be considered a novice until

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they met the above criteria. The study would have a description component and
matching component. In the description portion, the participant would be asked to first
read a short, misleading list of 15 wine descriptors without being told the list was
misleading (misleading here meaning that none of the descriptors on the list would be
used to describe the target wine). After a 5-minute interval period where the subject
would talk about his/her experience with wine, he/she would be asked to taste a target
wine and describe it in a way that would allow others to identify the target wine. This
description would be compared to a description written by a wine expert to see how
accurate the participant’s description of the taste was. Then, following a 10-minute break
in which the subject’s palate would be cleared (via eating bread or other similar means),
the target wine would be brought out with three other similar wines (similar here meaning
of the same grape type). The subject would then have to guess the correct target wine
after a tasting session. This experiment would be conducted once per four months, each
time with a different target wine, until the individual (who started as a novice wine taster)
met the criteria of wine expertise as stated above. According to my hypothesis, when
first starting the experiment, novices would be hurt by language and subject to verbal
overshadowing due to the misleading list, causing an inaccurate description of the target
wine by using descriptors that were provided on the list. This is based on the theory that
novices are more susceptible to verbal overshadowing because their perceptual skill
exceeds their verbal skills (Melcher and Schooler 1996). As the novice trained and
gained more knowledge about wine and wine descriptors, they would be less subject to
verbal overshadowing, and their knowledge of “wine language” would help their taste of
the wine, allowing them to write more accurate descriptions. Similarly, novices would be
unable to guess the target wine correctly during the matching component. When they
have received adequate training, the novices would be able to consistently pick the
correct target wines. If the results of this study showed that participants were able to pick
the target wine during the same time that they were able to write accurate descriptions,
then there would strong evidence for language as evolving from hurting an individual’s
ability to taste, to helping them. Even if the success of the matching component did not

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correlate with the success of the description component, as long as the results showed the
subject’s improvement over time in describing wines, that would point to language as
hurting or helping an individual depending on their skill level. We know that the results
would not show the opposite (participants getting worse at describing wine and matching
as time went on) because experts have shown an accurate ability to describe wines and
pick target wines from a group of similar ones (Melcher and Schooler 1996, Solomon
1997). However, if this were the case, then it could be argues that greater knowledge of
wine descriptors only ever hurts an individual’s ability to taste. If participants showed no
improvement at all over the course of the study, then greater knowledge of wine
descriptors would have neither helped nor hurt them. This is different than just providing
a novice with a term of wine descriptors used by experts and asking them to describe a
wine (Solomon 1990 Experiment 2). If a list is presented at the time of the study,
novices are not familiar with the terms and the tastes associated to each term. This is not
remotely close to the knowledge that experts have. Experts have been trained over time
to associate each term closely with a taste. The proposed study gives novices time to
obtain that same knowledge of wine descriptors as experts.
Conclusion
While there are many experiments that show that language either helps or hurts
taste, there are few experiments that attempt to bridge the gap between novice and expert.
It’s shown that language hurt novices, as evidence by verbal overshadowing (Melcher
and Schooler 1996), but it’s also shown that language helps taste by giving experts in
giving them a more descriptive and analytical way in which to describe their taste
(Lawless 1984). What’s missing is how language affects individuals as they make the
transition from novice to experts. Without knowledge of how language affects those in
the “grey area” between novice and expert, it is impossible to say with absolute certainty
that knowledge of wine descriptors hurts or helps taste. The best hypothesis that can be
made right now is to say that language both hurts and helps. Even if future studies
closely examines how language affects those transitioning from novice to expert, the best

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hypothesis may still be that language can both help and hinder an individual’s ability to
taste.

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