Clues to understanding why we perceive wines differently were unveiled by an American scientist at the Masters of Wine Symposium in Napa, reports Beverly Blanning MW on Decanter.com.

Speaking at the gathering of MWs, which takes place every four years, Charles Wysocki, of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, an organisation devoted to taste and smell, said wine is 'tasted' principally by smell.

Humans have only a few hundred stimuli for taste, but we can distinguish thousands of different smells. Wine aromas, though, are not the same for everyone and quite possibly as unique to each individual as a fingerprint.

Wysocki explained that specific anosmia - the inability to smell something readily detected by others - is a condition that affects almost everyone.

The scent of musk, for instance, may be a pungent aroma for many, but 43% of people cannot detect it at all. Other wine-related aromas which commonly cannot be detected include bananas, pears, sandalwood, and sweet, floral scents.

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