This ad captures my mood this week. Brutal days in the office. I should've been sneaking beer behind desk.
BYCU
I dig Wired magazine. I don't dig it enough to subscribe, so they hate me of course, but I do enjoy their stuff.
Earlier this week, I ran across this great piece about the effect music has on our wine tastes. It contains a lot of neat information, including this:
All sorts of clever experiments have demonstrated the limitations of the tongue. It turns out that expert wine critics can be tricked into confusing cheap and expensive clarets, that we prefer beer laced with balsamic vinegar (as long we don't know it's been added), that most people can't tell Coke from Pepsi (but still have strong preferences) or pate from dog food. My favorite, though, comes from the mischievous Frederic Brochet at the University of Bordeaux. In a 2001 experiment, Brochet invited 57 wine experts and asked them to give their impressions of what looked like two glasses of red and white wine. The wines were actually the same white wine, one of which had been tinted red with food coloring. But that didn't stop the experts from describing the “red” wine in language typically used to describe red wines. One expert praised its “jamminess,” while another enjoyed its “crushed red fruit.” Not a single one noticed it was actually a white wine.
But the gist of the piece is this: "When people drink wine to the accompaniment of music, they perceive the wine to have taste characteristics that reflect the nature of that concurrent music."
Now, the study apparently didn't measure the effects of heavy metal or Johnny Cash on wine tasting, but it sounds like the findings are valid enough. The author points out that the tongue is pretty dumb and that all sensations from the other senses have an influence on what we think we're tasting.
I suspect he's right, but I also suspect there's something particularly powerful about the sense of hearing. There's a reason that Marshall McLuhan characterized the telephone as a very cold medium. When engaged, the sense of hearing tends to absorb the listener. It doesn't surprise me that, in turn, the absorption filters through to the other parts of the body.
I'd also point out that a good old rock-n-roll song makes me feel more like a beer than a piano instrumental. Mick Jagger made a similar observation about rock-n-roll and the conjugal act. Healthy people make the some observation whenever they look for the perfect "work out" music.
Now get out there, turn on some music, and drink some beer!
Anecdote
Renowned author and drinker Kingsley Amis had his own house rule about drinking. "I'll pour you the first one and after that, if you don't have one, it's your f***ing fault. You know where it is."
