Is the Comeuppance for the Wine Snob at Hand? (November 15, 2004)

When WS Gilbert's Lord High Executioner, Ko Ko sings:

    As some day it may happen that a victim must be found,
    I've got a little list--I've got a little list
    Of society offenders who might well be underground,
    And who never would be missed--who never would be missed!

the wine snob isn't mentioned, but he should have been. Now Koen G. C. Weel, Alexandra E. M. Boelrijk, Jack J. Burger, Maykel Verschueren, Harry Gruppen, Alphons G. J. Voragen, and Gerrit Smit report on a "New Device to Simulate Swallowing and in Vivo Aroma Release in the Throat from Liquid and Semiliquid Food Systems," (J. Agric. Food Chem.; 2004; 52(21) pp 6564 - 6571).

As Nature's Philip Ball observes, "Our sensory experience of foods depends not just on the complex blend of aromas that the food gives off, but on exactly how these are released in the mouth and throat." Going a step further Koen and colleagues working on the deduction that the sensory effects of foods -- other than the basic five tastes (salty, sour, sweet, bitter and umami) -- are derived "mostly from a thin film of liquid or semi-liquid material that is deposited in the throat during swallowing and which discharges its aroma molecules into the breath" connected two glass tubes with a clamped rubber hose. The liquid of interest is placed in the top tube, with or without saliva, then the clamp is opened allowing the mixture to drain through the rubber hose.

Now coated with a thin film of "wine" the hose has air forced through it allowing the connected mass spectrometer to analyse the film's volatiles.

All that's left now is to derive the database and artificially intelligent system with which to challenge the wine taster, amateur or professional comparably to the Garry Kasparov vs Deep Blue test match.