“Does a Glass of White Wine Taste Like a Glass of Domain Sigalas Santorini Asirtiko Athiri 2005?” A Biosemiotic Approach to Wine-Tasting

Abstract

The object of our paper is to examine how wine-related knowledge and practices play an important role in determining the respective flavour experiences of novice wine drinkers and sommeliers. We defend the idea that sensation is informed by knowledge, as it circulates in a cultural environment. Biosemiotics has developed appropriate concepts helping us understand how the same wine can generate diverging experiences. Within a biosemiotic framework, we consider wine flavours as relational, semiosic experiences produced by the convergence of sensorydiscriminative, motivational-affective and cognitive-evaluative factors. Drawing from fundamental biosemiotics we argue that these factors vary according to the creature and its simultaneously biological and cultural umwelt. We conclude by examining a series of empirical studies consolidating the idea that sensation is informed by knowledge and language.

Identity creation and cluster construction: the case of the Paso Robles wine region

“…In this case, the authenticity is congruent with the identity formation of the wines as being of high quality. The social construction processes seen in music and the visual arts appear to be less complex in the creation of the identity of a wine region, though not in the construction of opinions about the quality of a wine (e.g Hope and Patoine, 2009)…”