News

  We all know that describing the aromas of a wine is difficult task for most people. We also know that the ability to discriminate a specific odor at a low concentration varies among people. In fact, the ability to detect a specific smell is due to biological/genetical aspects and it is due to olfactory training. The genetics play an important role in how we smell, as almost 30% of the genes responsible for our olfaction is different from one person to another. This means that some people struggle more than others when trying to perceive a specific odor. The...

It is very important to create in our memory a wide database of smelling references that we are able to recognize in the food and wine that we consume. Without this “aroma database” we would not be able to recognize a smell when we perceive it. Also, the wine faults are not commonly found in wines nowadays and it is therefore difficult to recognize them. For this reason, we decided to increase the number of wine aromas and we created a 24 aroma set. This 24 red wine aroma set has: the same 12 aromas included in our standard red...

Our sense of smell is a powerful sensory ability that we do not fully utilize. In fact, we are not used to giving a name to what we smell, and we cannot describe an odor that we like or dislike. But how many different odors can humans discriminate? A recent study has found that “humans can discriminate more than 1 trillion olfactory stimuli.” That is incredible! However, our brains cannot give meaning to most of these stimuli. Recognizing scents is a difficult task for most people when they are blinded. This is because we are not used to doing it,...

  Recognising scents blindly is a difficult task for most people. This is because we are not used to using our sense of smell, and when we smell a portion of food or an apple, we often do so with our eyes (i.e. we recognise it by its appearance and not by its smell). This is why closing our eyes makes it difficult for most people to identify even the smell of an apple. The poor use of the sense of smell also means that our spoken language does not have specific adjectives to describe a smell. Therefore, to describe...

Trappist beers are Belgian abbey beers that are produced inside a monastery under the supervision of monks. They are a group of very varied beers that reflect the traditions handed down by the monks over the centuries. Dubbel is a term used to indicate Trappist beers of medium-high alcohol content (about 7°). In the past, in fact, Dubbel and Tripel indicated the increasing strength of beer (in comparison with the strength of the beer the monks, themselves, consumed in general). They can fall into the broader category of Brown Ale beers. Dubbels are malty beers with a medium-low degree of...