Expectation or Sensorial Reality? An Empirical Investigation of the Biodynamic Calendar for Wine Drinkers
Wendy V. Parr , Dominique Valentin, Phil Reedman, Claire Grose, James A. Green
Abstract
The study’s aim was to investigate a central tenet of biodynamic philosophy as applied to wine tasting, namely that wines taste different in systematic ways on days determined by the lunar cycle. Nineteen New Zealand wine professionals tasted blind 12 Pinot noir wines at times determined within the biodynamic calendar for wine drinkers as being favourable (Fruit day) and unfavourable (Root day) for wine tasting. Tasters rated each wine four times, twice on a Fruit day and twice on a Root day, using 20 experimenter-provided descriptors. Wine descriptors spanned a range of varietal-relevant aroma, taste, and mouthfeel characteristics, and were selected with the aim of elucidating both qualitative and quantitative aspects of each wine’s perceived aromatic, taste, and structural aspects including overall wine quality and liking. A post-experimental questionnaire was completed by each participant to determine their degree of knowledge about the purpose of the study, and their awareness of the existence of the biodynamic wine drinkers’ calendar. Basic wine physico-chemical parameters were determined for the wines tasted on each of a Fruit day and a Root day. Results demonstrated that the wines were judged differentially on all attributes measured although type of day as determined by the biodynamic calendar for wine drinkers did not influence systematically any of the wine characteristics evaluated. The findings highlight the importance of testing experimentally practices that are based on anecdotal evidence but that lend themselves to empirical investigation.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the findings reported in the present study provide no evidence in support of the notion that how a wine tastes is associated with the lunar cycle. The Pinot noir wines in the sample set were judged by experienced wine professionals as varying significantly in a range of characteristics. However, the day on which there were tasted did not influence these judgments. It is conceivable that the anecdotal reports of sensory effects that have been described in wine-industry media could be due to expectation effects rather than actual differences in the wines. Consumers expecting a wine to be more expressive and aromatic on Fruit days might actually perceive them as such through top down cognitive effects [22]. Such top down effects involving a range of factors have been reported previously. For example, Rose Pangborn and colleagues found that a white wine colored pink to give it the appearance of Rosé wine was perceived by wine professionals as sweeter than a non-coloured wine sample [23]. Likewise, researchers in Bordeaux reported that colouring a white wine with odourless anthocyanin to make it red led wine experts to describe the wine’s flavour as that of a red wine [24]. These results highlight the importance of testing, where possible, anecdotally-based notions and practices in the food and beverage industries. Further work, replicating this study and manipulating the lunar calendar information provided to the tasters, may help in validating the hypothesis pertaining to expectation-driven effects.
Taste and Moon
Re: Taste and Moon
Some thoughtful discussion in this and the postings after
http://wineoscope.com/2017/01/04/an-unf ... -calendar/
An unfortunate opportunity for misdirection, or, lack of evidence to support a biodynamic tasting calendar
A group of New Zealand sensory scientists have just published an article entitled “Expectation or sensorial reality? An empirical investigation of the biodynamic calendar for wine drinkers” with the open-access journal PLoS One. Without any offense whatsoever to the researchers, this is a bad paper, not because of how the research has been done, but because of how easily it’s likely to be misunderstood.
The study’s question was whether tasting wine on a fruit versus a root day, as determined by a biodynamic tasting calendar, affects how the wine tastes. The study’s method was to have 19* wine experts tasteT the same 12 New Zealand pinot noirs on a root day and again on a fruit day (or a fruit day and again on a root day; half of the tasters followed each order), scoring each wine (a few times over, for statistical consistency) as “low” to “intense” on each of twenty factors like “sweetness,” “tannins,” “expressiveness,” and “overall structure.”
The study’s conclusion was that the difference between fruit and root days made no difference to how tasters perceived pinot noirs in any way. That’s unsurprising for two reasons – that the idea of a biodynamic tasting calendar is hogwash, and that biodynamics is a spiritual system that can’t for the most part be relevantly tested by reductionist scientific means – but that’s not my main point.
My main point is that this paper is far too likely to be taken as empirical evidence that biodynamics is a load of nonsense, even though that’s not what the paper says. The paper says that perceptions of what’s in a bottle don’t systematically change between days categorized in a particular way by a calendar devised by Maria and Matthias Thun in 2010. Information about how they devised this calendar is difficult to find online, though I admittedly didn’t try very hard.
The question doesn’t address a core principle or practice of biodynamic agriculture. All the same, it’s far too likely to be inappropriately co-opted to support the “biodynamics doesn’t work when put to the empirical scientific test” argument even though the paper doesn’t support that argument. This danger of inadvertent misapprehension (or deliberate misapplication) is worse because of the relatively few peer-reviewed scientific papers published about biodynamics, which means that this one will get a relatively larger share of attention now and in future reviews than it would otherwise. Moreover, PLoS One is a generalist journal, and so this paper will be read by a lot of people who don’t know enough about biodynamics or wine to clearly distinguish biodynamic-guided tasting from biodynamic agriculture. That’s unfortunate.
About those two reasons why this article’s findings are unsurprising. The first is that the idea that wine tastes different depending on astral movements just doesn’t cohere with, and indeed is contradicted by, enough other forms of knowledge to give it any credence. Bottled wine changes over time – call it “alive, “if you’d like – but over months and years, not days. And even without attacking biodynamics as a knowledge system, we have a lot of reasons to believe that astral movements don’t affect day-to-day life on earth.**
The second is that biodynamics is a “spiritual” system, which is to say that its efficacy is at least in some ways tied up with belief and personal development. Biodynamics treats the farm as a coherent ecosystem or “single, self-sustaining unit,” of which the farmer is a part. By that biodynamic logic, it makes sense that the caring, positive, trusting farmer is part of the efficacy of biodynamics on a farm, and that removing that person – or, indeed, isolating any one element in the biodynamic system away from the rest for the purposes of a controlled scientific trial – will disrupt the system.
All of that applies to biodynamic agricultural practices which, as I’ve said elsewhere, I think make a good deal of sense for the same reasons that following strange diets often benefits the dieter: in paying caring, positive attention to what you’re doing, you’ll probably do it better. Call it the placebo effect, though thinking about the farm as an ecosystem affected by everything you put into it and a living thing deserving of care is more than just the power of positive thinking; that’s good environmental stewardship. I can’t say the same about the biodynamic tasting calendar.
Of course, the placebo effect usually isn’t a bad thing, either. If opening your favorite bottles on fruit days helps you enjoy your wine more, who am I to say that you shouldn’t enjoy your wine? Just don’t use this new research as a reason why you (or, heaven forbid, someone else) shouldn’t enjoy a biodynamic one.
*Which makes you wonder what was wrong with the twentieth person’s data, or whether someone came down with a cold or had to go home to clean up an overflowing toilet.
**Beyond things like the psychological and sociological influence of full versus new moons, for example, which is a different matter and an important point, given how human psychological influences can ramify.
http://wineoscope.com/2017/01/04/an-unf ... -calendar/
An unfortunate opportunity for misdirection, or, lack of evidence to support a biodynamic tasting calendar
A group of New Zealand sensory scientists have just published an article entitled “Expectation or sensorial reality? An empirical investigation of the biodynamic calendar for wine drinkers” with the open-access journal PLoS One. Without any offense whatsoever to the researchers, this is a bad paper, not because of how the research has been done, but because of how easily it’s likely to be misunderstood.
The study’s question was whether tasting wine on a fruit versus a root day, as determined by a biodynamic tasting calendar, affects how the wine tastes. The study’s method was to have 19* wine experts tasteT the same 12 New Zealand pinot noirs on a root day and again on a fruit day (or a fruit day and again on a root day; half of the tasters followed each order), scoring each wine (a few times over, for statistical consistency) as “low” to “intense” on each of twenty factors like “sweetness,” “tannins,” “expressiveness,” and “overall structure.”
The study’s conclusion was that the difference between fruit and root days made no difference to how tasters perceived pinot noirs in any way. That’s unsurprising for two reasons – that the idea of a biodynamic tasting calendar is hogwash, and that biodynamics is a spiritual system that can’t for the most part be relevantly tested by reductionist scientific means – but that’s not my main point.
My main point is that this paper is far too likely to be taken as empirical evidence that biodynamics is a load of nonsense, even though that’s not what the paper says. The paper says that perceptions of what’s in a bottle don’t systematically change between days categorized in a particular way by a calendar devised by Maria and Matthias Thun in 2010. Information about how they devised this calendar is difficult to find online, though I admittedly didn’t try very hard.
The question doesn’t address a core principle or practice of biodynamic agriculture. All the same, it’s far too likely to be inappropriately co-opted to support the “biodynamics doesn’t work when put to the empirical scientific test” argument even though the paper doesn’t support that argument. This danger of inadvertent misapprehension (or deliberate misapplication) is worse because of the relatively few peer-reviewed scientific papers published about biodynamics, which means that this one will get a relatively larger share of attention now and in future reviews than it would otherwise. Moreover, PLoS One is a generalist journal, and so this paper will be read by a lot of people who don’t know enough about biodynamics or wine to clearly distinguish biodynamic-guided tasting from biodynamic agriculture. That’s unfortunate.
About those two reasons why this article’s findings are unsurprising. The first is that the idea that wine tastes different depending on astral movements just doesn’t cohere with, and indeed is contradicted by, enough other forms of knowledge to give it any credence. Bottled wine changes over time – call it “alive, “if you’d like – but over months and years, not days. And even without attacking biodynamics as a knowledge system, we have a lot of reasons to believe that astral movements don’t affect day-to-day life on earth.**
The second is that biodynamics is a “spiritual” system, which is to say that its efficacy is at least in some ways tied up with belief and personal development. Biodynamics treats the farm as a coherent ecosystem or “single, self-sustaining unit,” of which the farmer is a part. By that biodynamic logic, it makes sense that the caring, positive, trusting farmer is part of the efficacy of biodynamics on a farm, and that removing that person – or, indeed, isolating any one element in the biodynamic system away from the rest for the purposes of a controlled scientific trial – will disrupt the system.
All of that applies to biodynamic agricultural practices which, as I’ve said elsewhere, I think make a good deal of sense for the same reasons that following strange diets often benefits the dieter: in paying caring, positive attention to what you’re doing, you’ll probably do it better. Call it the placebo effect, though thinking about the farm as an ecosystem affected by everything you put into it and a living thing deserving of care is more than just the power of positive thinking; that’s good environmental stewardship. I can’t say the same about the biodynamic tasting calendar.
Of course, the placebo effect usually isn’t a bad thing, either. If opening your favorite bottles on fruit days helps you enjoy your wine more, who am I to say that you shouldn’t enjoy your wine? Just don’t use this new research as a reason why you (or, heaven forbid, someone else) shouldn’t enjoy a biodynamic one.
*Which makes you wonder what was wrong with the twentieth person’s data, or whether someone came down with a cold or had to go home to clean up an overflowing toilet.
**Beyond things like the psychological and sociological influence of full versus new moons, for example, which is a different matter and an important point, given how human psychological influences can ramify.