How Music Changes Your Wine Experience

If you’re familiar with wine tasting, you know it requires most of your senses (smell, taste and touch). But what about sound? Certainly the swishing sound of your wine in the glass can’t have an affect on your experience. However, according to several studies, other sounds like music can.

When you hear a certain song or type of music, you instantly associate it with something familiar, like a memory from your past. That’s because listening to specific pieces of music activates related pieces of information in your brain. This seems to also be true for wine drinkers when listening to certain sounds. So, what does sound change about your wine experience?

Tasting Notes

Restaurants commonly set a mood with music, lighting, furniture and décor. But, the music doesn’t just give you a specific impression of the restaurant; it can make you feel a variety of emotions and affect the way you perceive and taste your wine. Let’s say you’re enjoying a glass of white wine while listening to a piece of music that is soft and mellow. Chances are when you describe the wine, you will find that you perceive it the same way as the type of music you were listening to. You can then consume the same type of wine the following week while listening to more powerful music only to find you experience it differently and describe it as strong and powerful.

This was an actual study done analyzing the effect of background music on the taste of wine. It was conducted by Dr. Adrian C. North of Heriot Watt University with 250 participants who were provided with a variety of wines to taste while listening to music. The results found that the description of the wines tested matched the energy of the music.

Purchase Behavior 

When you hear classical music, you likely associate it with sophistication and class. And, naturally, sophistication comes with a price. That’s why when analyzing the influence of music on shopping behavior, research showed that consumers were driven to buy more expensive wine bottles when classical music was playing (in comparison to when top-forty music was playing).

In 1997, a similar study was conducted in a store using French and German instrumental music, with none of the participants being told what kind of music it was. As consumers shopped, there was French background music playing. During the time the music was playing, consumers purchased French wine more than they did German ones. On the other hand, when the study was conducted again using German music, consumers chose to purchase German wine over the French wine.

As you can see, music not only influences how wine drinkers perceive their wine, it also affects the region that consumers choose to purchase from, as well as the overall price point. Wine Enthusiast even released a wine and music pairing guide to further enhance your next tasting.

The combination of listening music and allowing it to influence your mood, in addition to your sense of smell and taste, is your brain’s way of creating a more harmonious experience. And you thought pairing was just for food and wine…