I'll drink to that where we get behind the scenes of the beverage business.

I'm Levy Dalton.

I'm Erin Scala and here's our show today. Oh, We talk about flavors and characteristics of wine all the time in our business, as if there are concrete facts.

And in a way, when you're smelling and talking about wine, it helps to be able to nail down the tangible aspects of it all.

But tasting things is also enmeshed in perception.

We may think we are tasting and smelling things in wine, but really these

flavors are created by our brain. And our different brains create different flavors and

ideas attached to those flavors.

When our brain creates flavors, there are two main things that are happening.

First, there is a substance smelled, and this substance becomes a data file so to speak in your mind.

The second thing that happens is you filter this information through cultural paradigms

and your own bank of past experience.

So once we both smell something,

there are infinite ways in which our ideas of what we have just smelled

can differ from one another.

The science of flavor is a pretty interesting field of study. You probably all have Harold McGee's on food and cooking,

and whenever you look something up, you'll find out what molecule makes one thing or another taste a certain way.

But neuroscientist Gordon Shepard points out that,

though each food has its characteristic molecular composition,

modified by its preparation, by themselves foods have no flavors, they are the raw materials

out of which the brain creates flavor.

So how does our brain create flavor?

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