Why Can’t We All Taste the Same Wine the Same Way? Genetic Variation in Sensory Perception (includes tasting)

Two winemakers taste the same barrel sample. One calls it beautifully toasty; the other finds it faintly medicinal and won’t touch it. A judging panel splits down the middle on whether a wine is “smoke tainted.” A consumer panel can’t agree if a Pinot noir is fruity or floral. These disagreements are often chalked up to training, preference, or inconsistency — but a growing body of research shows that genetics plays a measurable, and in some cases dominant, role in how individuals perceive specific compounds central to wine quality and fault assessment.

This interactive session will begin before the formal discussion starts. Attendees will be invited to arrive early and move through a series of self-guided smell and taste stations, giving them an opportunity to experience firsthand just how differently we perceive the same compounds. Using calibrated standards with well-documented genetic links to perception, participants will explore PROP (a bitterness compound tied to the TAS2R38 gene and the classic marker of taster/non-taster status), beta-ionone (a floral/fruity aroma compound where a single gene variant can cause significant differences in sensitivity), vanillin (central to oak character, with documented genotype-linked differences in threshold and perceived pleasantness), and guaiacol (a primary chemical marker associated with smoke taint, whose perceived intensity can be shaped by genetic variation). Participants will self-classify their sensitivity at each station and create their own personal sensory profile.

With those individual results in hand, the session will bring the room together to explore what these differences mean for the wine industry. The discussion will connect attendees’ firsthand experiences to real-world decisions: why sensory panels disagree, how genetic blind spots can influence blending and quality-control calls, why consumers and critics may honestly perceive the same wine differently, and what this means for how the industry evaluates, describes, and markets wine. Attendees will leave with more than an understanding of sensory variability — they have experienced themselves, providing a practical and memorable framework for recognizing sensory disagreement not as a failure of training, but as a real and predictable source of variability worth understanding and designing around.

Moderator:
Elizabeth Tomasino, Oregon State University, Corvallis

Speaker:
Camilla Sartori, Oregon State University, Corvallis