Shocks for the Masters of Wine in Napa

Probably the two most memorable presentations at this weekend’s Masters of Wine Symposium in the Napa Valley were given by people who have no professional connection with wine whatsoever. Neither happened to be American.

Professor Michael O’Mahoney is a professor of food science at Davis, a droll Englishman who looks rather like Cardew Robinson (if by any chance you remember him) who demonstrated to us all just how unreliable our sensory perceptions are, thereby throwing into confusion the notion that there could possibly be a single objective judgment about any given wine (hooray!).

Tim Hanni MW organised this session and made...