A Natural Nose for Whiskey
When we think of science in the whiskey industry, often we are imagining the quality control lab which ensures all the grains are free from foreign materials and the pH of the mash is just right. Few people realise that there’s a whole area of scientific research exploring how we interpret the many flavours of whiskey when we taste it, and even fewer people realise that there’s strong evidence indicating womens’ biology makes us better whiskey tasters.
A study called (Oliveira-Pinto et al, , Nov 2014) sent to me by Susan Reigler, former lecturer and research associate in biology at Indiana University Southeast, and founding member of The Bourbon Women Association, states right in the title that women have more of the cells that translate olfactory sensations into information processed by our brains. This conclusion was later backed up by the publication of a meta-analysis (Sorokowski et al, , Feb 2019) that examined the results of a variety of studies with a total sample size of more than 37,000 people. The authors stated that the research seemed to confirm what
