Empowering Future Winemakers: Sensory Training and Classroom Lessons from Dr. Hildegarde Heymann | 8

Dr. Hildegarde Heymann shares her wine journey, offering advice on winemaker sensory training and research, reflecting on her outstanding career.

Empowering Future Winemakers: Sensory Training and Classroom Lessons from Dr. Hildegarde Heymann | 8

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Meet today's guest, Dr. Hildegarde Heymann, a trailblazing sensory scientist and professor at UC Davis. 

Dr. Heymann shares her unique journey from growing up with wine in South Africa, breaking gender barriers as the first woman to earn an enology degree at Stellenbosch University, to her discovery of sensory science at UC Davis, with Dr. Rose-Marie Pangborn.

She discusses her two-step approach to teaching wine tasting—building trust first, then layering in complexity—and offers insights on how to foster confidence in new tasters.

The conversation explores,

• the challenges of integrating sensory science in the wine industry, 
• the value of understanding individual sensory strengths and blind spots, 
• the nuances of food and wine pairing, and 
• practical advice for wine professionals keen on building better sensory practices.

Links from today’s episode:

Connect with Dr. Heymann by clicking here.

Check out Episode 6 to take a deeper dive of your sensory blindspots:
The Limits of Wine Expertise: Achieving Objective Results in Professional Tasting

Your Free Resource from Isabelle:

Discover the five mistakes turning your guests away – and how to fix them!

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• Learn more about working with me on my website
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• Leave Isabelle a message

Transcript

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[00:00:00] Hildegarde: Probably one of the things that drives me crazy is Americans telling me that Sauvignon Blanc smells like gooseberries, and then I say Indian gooseberries, Chinese Gooseberries, Cape Gooseberries, or European gooseberries. There's another 10 other versions, but those are the easiest ones to find pictures of the Chinese gooseberries are kiwi.

A Indian gooseberry is usually eaten as a pickle. Mm-hmm. European gooseberry is related to gas. And the Cape Gooseberry is rated to tomatillos. Which of these are you talking about? And the only way we can understand which Gooseberry you're talking about is to actually taste the gooseberries and then say, this is the gooseberry we were talking about.

[00:00:44] Isabelle: Bonjour. And welcome to We Taste Wine Differently. The podcast designed to empower you, wine professionals, and help you truly connect with today's wine consumers. Through the power of sensory experiences. [00:01:00] Each week, we will explore practical science-backed methods and actionable insights rooted in sensory and consumer science to transform how you taste, talk about and present wine, ultimately enhancing the tasting room experience and building long-term relationships with your consumers.

Are you ready to taste wine differently and adapt to today's changing dynamics? Let's dive in.

Welcome to today's episode of We Taste Wine Differently. I'm your host, Isabel Le Shab, a sensory scientist educator and wine testing coach. I am excited to welcome my dear friend, Dr. Hildegard Haman, distinguished professor and immunologist in the Department of Viticulture Immunology at the university.

California Davis. Professor Haman and I have [00:02:00] known each other for many years. We are both sensory scientists, which create the link. Uh, we met at many conferences and for many years we shared a Friendsgiving dinner in Davis. So, uh, that's how we, we connected. But Dr. Hildegard he's very well known by many sensory scientists and many newbies discover sensory science through this book.

Which is a sensory evaluation of food that she, uh, co-wrote with, uh, Dr. Harry Lawless. So this textbook is a must read if you are a student of sensory science. Dr. Haman had a long in fruit food career in academia. She has worked in all areas of sensory science and has evaluated numerous food and non-food, which I am, I'm amazed, of course, wine, meat, ice cream, cereals, juices.

Cat litter and uh, soap and toothpaste. But for today we'll focus on her contribution to grape and wine research and [00:03:00] education. So I'm really excited to explore her approach to tasting wine differently and I want to welcome you to the show, Hildegard.

[00:03:08] Hildegarde: Thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to this.

[00:03:12] Isabelle: Alright, so you work on so many products and I read somewhere that your. Initial career goal was to be a wine maker. So can you share your wine journey from discovery of wine to your current role at,, university of California Davis?

[00:03:29] Hildegarde: I can do that. It's a long and winding road. That's okay. I grew up in South Africa where it was legal to consume alcohol if your parents gave it to you.

Mm-hmm. And my parents really liked wine. They didn't really like any, uh, cocktails, which was the thing in the early seventies. So usually for Sunday lunch or so, they would have wine and we were allowed to have some. I didn't think about being a wine maker. I grew up in the city many miles from the wine industry.

But then when I needed to go to [00:04:00] university, I didn't wanna be a chemist. I didn't wanna be a biologist. I didn't wanna be a mathematician. I wanted to do something that did everything. And so I read all the potential syllabi and found out that if you become a winemaker. You could do biology, you could do chemistry, you could do plants.

It's all in one thing. And so that sounded really interesting to me. My father wasn't particularly enthralled by this idea because a woman in the wine industry just didn't seem right to him. But the university accepted me and I was the first woman to graduate with a bachelor's degree in immunology and viticulture from the University of Stellenbosch in 1977.

I had a really good time as a student. I enjoyed everything. I loved it. I really fell in love with wine making. But in 1977, no winery was willing to hire a female winemaker. Which was really frustrating. I [00:05:00] ended up in a research facility where I was making research wine, 200 different research wines.

Uh, we were working on the earliest incarnation of adding Yan to wine, and prior to the work we did there, it wasn't happening anywhere in the world. So it's my number one first thing that I ever did. After about two harvests, I decided, well, maybe if I got a master's degree, people would take me seriously and give me a wine making degree.

Looking back, that was naive, but that was the idea. After deciding to, I wanted to go to the University of Sobo to get the master's, they suggested I go elsewhere. After long and dreary process, I ended up at uc Davis. Doing a Master's in food science with enology as the emphasis area. I worked with Roger Bolton, who is one of the most amazing human beings I've ever worked with.

Probably one of the most brilliant wine scientists out there. And, uh, I was enjoying myself. I don't think I actually would've gotten a job in South Africa after [00:06:00] this, but that became moot when I very accidentally took Rosemary Pangborn food Science Sensory course. I wasn't supposed to take this for my master's degree, but my roommate was supposed to, and she needed a friend in this class 'cause she worked in pairs in the lab.

Okay. And convinced me to take the class. I ended up in the class in Feb in January of 1980, and about five weeks into the class I was sitting in class and Professor Penguin was teaching. And I looked at her and I thought to myself, that is what I wanna do with the rest of my life. Wow. And the next.

Thoughts in my head were all unprintable. They were all really bad swear words because that was not the plan. I was supposed to go home to South Africa in less than three months. I was supposed to find a job as a winemaker, and now suddenly I wanted to be a sensory professor. This was not gonna happen.

Long story short, I did go back to South Africa, went back to the research facility, [00:07:00] and proceeded to move mountains and ended about back up in Davis in the fall of 1981. Wow. I ended up not working for Pangborn, but for Ann Noble and ended up with a PhD in agricultural chemistry with flavor chemistry and sensory science as my main emphasis areas.

And then I was absolutely lucky enough to get a job as a professor at the University of Missouri without a postdoc. Um, at the end of my PhD, I went to Missouri. Who, where I did not work on wine. Mm-hmm. I had one wine project there, but I worked on meat and everything else under the sun. Yeah. And then in I, in 2002, and Nobel decided that she wanted to retire at way too young in age.

And Davis called me and said, would you like to come back? And I did. Yeah. Here I am. And we were lucky to have you back. I'm not sure they always thought so.

[00:07:59] Isabelle: I do. [00:08:00] I think, it's great to, with your experience and your journey and, you know. Many of us sensory scientists, we discover sensory science by chance, right?

And, um, once we are hooked and we do anything we, we can to stay in the field. So, uh, congratulations for your perseverance and coming back to us.

[00:08:19] Hildegarde: Yeah, looking back, I can't believe it actually worked out. I mean, you know, you, you, you're 20 something years old and you think the world is just gonna work the way it's supposed to, and it actually did.

[00:08:29] Isabelle: Yeah. Again, yeah. What a journey. So your duties as a professor mm-hmm. Uh, include teaching and research and, I remember seeing a, a photo of your lab with a. I said it, in real life actually, with your map, with all your students, from around the world.

That was amazing. So, when you introduce wine tasting to these new students, coming to your class, and, you know, can depend, if they are undergrad or, or grad, but how do you approach wine tasting and showing them, that, there is [00:09:00] wine tasting and wine tasting.

[00:09:01] Hildegarde: Yeah I taught two clauses in wine tasting in quotes.

One was my sensory evaluation class of. Of wine, which is a senior level class, um, in which we learn the objective and subjective ways of tasting wines for various reasons. But I also taught every other year a class called wines of the World, which was a class to exposed students to wine. Yeah. The problem in the United States is that you're not legally allowed to drink until you're 21.

Mm-hmm. And that means that students come to us. Theoretically without ever having had wine, and yet there are freshmen and sophomores in, in a wine program. Now, what they do when I'm not there, I don't ask, but my assumption is that this is their first exposure. This was a sophomore level class, so we get them at about 19, 20 ish.

We legally can have them taste wine in class. The state of California allows us to do that [00:10:00] as long as they spit in. As long as. Totally controlled and as long as all sorts of pedagogical reasons are, are met. So in that class they taste 10 wines a week for nine weeks. It's in the spring. So we always have, um, Memorial Day in the middle of that.

It's always on a Monday. We do three hours, and my goal in that class is just to expose them to as many wines as I possibly can afford to expose them to. This wine is expensive. We tend to do lesser known areas of the world or lesser known varieties. Um, we usually end up with one or two really expensive ones, but most of it's not very expensive.

And the point is to just get them comfortable talking about wine, talking about what they're tasting, talking what they're feeling, talking what they're seeing. Uh, there is no judgments. Sometimes they go off on tangents and I just sit there and go, oh, I don't believe this, but that's the whole point.

Mm-hmm. And then slowly as the quarter goes on, we get a little bit more [00:11:00] controlled and everybody starts trusting everybody else and is more willing to speak up and say what they see and how they feel, and, and I kind of nudge them into a direction. To me that clause is really important because I'm trying very hard to show them that wine should give you pleasure, that you should be able to discern something about the wine, whatever it is, at the very least, whether you liked it or not.

And then from there we can build on that. And then I get them two years later in the sensory cause where we again, taste 60 wines as what I call my savor wines after we had done. The data collection part for the class. We then have a saver wine selection, and these are things that I want to show them, whether it's unintentional oxidation or intentional oxidation or bubbles from around the world or whatever.

And in that class, we are a little more. Formalized in how we taste, and we have a little more expectations as to what they're doing this point. They're seniors [00:12:00] and they are usually over 21, so they can legally taste outside of the classroom. And that then becomes, so that's sort of a two step, I think if you expose them, you give them confidence that they can actually do this, and then you start adding information on top of that.

[00:12:15] Isabelle: Yeah. I mean, you used the word trust and that that's really what you know. Most of people who are not exposed to the wine, the world of wine, the first time they're part of a wine tasting, they're really intimidated and they, they don't, they like the confidence. And when you create that trust.

Environment that's really, help them, , really Right. Open up.

[00:12:35] Hildegarde: Yeah. And frequently in wine tasting groups, there's usually one or two people who think they know ex absolutely everything about everything. And the key in those environments to is to get those people to keep their mouths shut while everybody else starts realizing that they actually also have a voice and they don't have to agree with that person.

Um, but yeah, it's, it, it's a, it's a, it's a tight rope, but it's a fun one to do.

[00:12:58] Isabelle: Yeah. And [00:13:00] just to rebound on what you just said, that's one of the qualities of sensory scientists, moderate groups and making sure that everybody has a voice and when there are two dominant people, to acknowledge them, but also making sure that they don't.

Overwhelm the others that they don't, shut up. Shut down. Sorry. Shut down the, yeah. Yeah, because

[00:13:18] Hildegarde: everybody had, we all perceive things differently. Mm-hmm. And just because one person is getting lots of violets in the wine doesn't mean that somebody else is also getting violets. They may be getting something that they think is blackberries, but it ends up being partly the same compound.

So people should be able, comfortable to speak. And that's one of the things that sensory scientists get really good at is, first of all, making sure that everybody has a voice. And then secondly, getting to a consensus. Yeah, we probably make good mediators.

[00:13:47] Isabelle: We do sometimes. Yes, indeed. When we have the chance.

So I, I want to talk about, after, the, they are taking your class, they go through one or two [00:14:00] classes to discover the world of wine to, to gain confidence in their testing skills. And if they're pursued a sensory, science class, they, they gain, knowledge on the different methods too.

Tastes more objectively, for technical assessment of the wine. So my question is really about, how do they bring this knowledge, this training to the wine industry if they make the leap to the wine industry? Because forces is to recognize that. The wine industry, as a whole, from the small producer to the large producers, haven't really embraced the sun tasting part, letting you know, most of the big business decision relying on wine experts and, uh, their own expertise.

And it's maybe a judgment from my part, but I want to have, your point of view because you interact with this, new generation going into the industry.

[00:14:49] Hildegarde: Okay, so when I taught at Missouri in a food science department, I would say that 10 to 20% of my students actually ended up becoming sensory [00:15:00] scientists in the food industry.

And so my goals there in the teaching was very different. Here I teach in a wine department and none of my students are ever gonna do sensory. Okay. But every single one of them are gonna be consumers of sensory data. Whether that is because some supplier company is trying to sell them some new fancy widget that is going to make their wine wonderful in whatever way.

Wonderful is. Yeah. And there's gonna be sensory data to back that up. They need to know whether that sensory data is useful or not useful. Yeah, they need to know what the power of that study was. Was it worth doing this? What is it worth to spend another $20 a bottle to do this thing? Or is this just snake oil?

So it teach, they are gonna be consumers, they're gonna be reading scientific literature, and there's gonna be sensory in there. And they're gonna need to understand what happened in the [00:16:00] sensory in order to see whether that makes sense in their wine making situation. Yeah, if they are in a very small winery, that is really going to be their only exposure to sensory because they're not going to get confronted by a large winery knowing more about their wine than they do if they're in a mid-size to large winery.

Their products are getting sensorily evaluated by some of the very large companies. And those very large companies knows a know a great deal about the sensory attributes of their wines and use that information to sell the large company's wines. And so if you are gonna be competing either in a skew at that level or completely at that level, then you need sensory expertise.

The likelihood is that you're gonna have to buy it because it is, because you're competing on a very unlevel playing field if you don't. Yeah, those are really the ways in which I. Talk about the sensory side. The other thing I spend a lot of time on is because [00:17:00] winemakers have a tendency of using their own noses and tongues to make decisions, which is great.

The problem is we are all very, very different and some of us cannot smell TCA, for example, some of us, me specifically, cannot taste bitter, and so if I was a winemaker, I had to have, I would have to have somebody else. Who I trusted taste things to tell me if the wine is bitter or not. If you are a winemaker and you can't smell TCA mm-hmm you are gonna send cork product onto to the market.

So as a wine maker, you need to learn where your blind spots are. As we have blind spots, we also have oversensitive spots. For example, in my case, I smell etal acetate before it's even. Seen by anybody else. And I've learned through the years that when I'm sitting there going, this has so much of acetate, I don't know.

It's not because there's that much there, it's just 'cause I'm very sensitive and so I need to mm-hmm. Mentally say, that's [00:18:00] not that bad. It's not that bad. And so the other thing that I teach in my sensory class is I throw all kinds of reference standards at students so they can find their blind spots.

So they can find the places where they are. Different from the rest. So when they become winemakers, they can at least find people they can trust to get information about the things that they cannot smell and taste.

[00:18:21] Isabelle: Yeah, that's excellent. Actually, I just, worked on the other episode on blind spots and, , hidden biases and our different inter-individual sense.

Variability in our sensitivities. Mm-hmm. And, uh, it's interesting because I'm very sensitive to TCA, so we'll be a good team. And, you know, I'm not very sensitive to va, so I think we could work together. Yeah.

[00:18:41] Hildegarde: But yes, it's having a group, you know, all d we're all different the same way. You know, I have brown eyes, I can't change those.

And my sensitivities are what they are. And my insensitivities are what they are. I just need to learn what they are. And all winemakers have this.

[00:18:55] Isabelle: Yeah. Yeah. And you said that they, when they are working, as a [00:19:00] winemaker, uh, they're are testing with their nose and tongue.

But what about, you know, implementing, some good sensory practices when they do that? Do they carry on, you know, with the, what , you told them. I, I don't mean like having a sensory panel, but at least, , making sure that everything is blind.

[00:19:14] Hildegarde: You know, I think some of the students that leave do, um, they take some of that with them.

They make reference standards. They taste with groups where they get to understand each other's meaning of words. Where they understand what you mean when you say this, and what I mean when I say that. Um, others. Never pay any more attention. Um, I had one example of a student who told me in class that he didn't see the point of him doing any of this and that the day he leaves, he was never gonna do another sensory test.

And I said, well, as long as you graduate, that doesn't really matter, does it? And mm-hmm. It was two years later, I had a phone call from the same student telling me that his boss had just decided that he needed to do some discrimination testing. And he had thrown away all of his sensory work and could I help him set up some discrimination [00:20:00] testing?

And I said, I thought you were never gonna do this again. And he said, Dr. Haman, I made, I have made big mistakes and I was one of 'em. And so I helped him and yeah, solved the problem. But yeah, they don't know what they're gonna walk into. I try to give them the best grounding they can possibly have, and after that, it's up to them to either use it or not.

Yeah. Yeah.

[00:20:23] Isabelle: Well thank you for that. And , how many students have you trained since you joined in 2003? Oh, you know, I was,

[00:20:29] Hildegarde: I was counting this the other day 'cause I used to teach the introduction to Wine making class, which was about 400 students a quarter. And I did that for about 15 years. So there's about 6,000 there.

And then there I, at Missouri, I did the same, same class introduction to wine making class, although we didn't have a wine making program, and that was about 200 students a quarter. And I taught that for about 16 years. And then I, uh, somewhere around 10,000 is sort of a nice round

[00:20:57] Isabelle: number. All right, so there is a large number of [00:21:00] people in the, in the industry, or even if they're not industry, but who have.

An interesting wine who have been exposed to Right. Sensory practices and tasting wine in some way. Yes. Differently. So that's excellent. That's good news. So you are a teacher, you're a great teacher, but also an incredible res researcher and sensory nutrition. I learned a lot from you, in terms of analyzing data as well.

Mm-hmm. When you reflect back on your career, working in the grape and wine, uh, research, you know, what are your, the contributions you're the most proud of?

[00:21:35] Hildegarde: I can tell, talk about the firsts, the things that I did that I didn't plan on being the first, but somehow but be the first. So between my bachelor's and master's and right after my master's, I worked on y on, um, Sable nitrogen with my boss.

And we published the earliest work on addition of Yan to decrease H two s. Then for my PhD I was working [00:22:00] on, um, with oxy, purines bell pepper flavors in Cabernet in California. And I, it was difficult because getting a method that would analyze at that level was hugely problematic. Today it's easy. 40 years ago it was very difficult.

But the thing I found out during that was not part of the study, but what turned out to be really important is that methoxy period is in a slight sensitive. And so that little piece of information led to the fact that people opened the, the fruiting zones of Cabernets to control the amount of bell pepper.

So it was not part of my study, but it was something I found during my studies. And then after I came back here, I seemed to sort of start areas, um, I had assumed was interested in minerality. There was no scientific publications on minerality. So we did a first step study on minerality, and then other people like Jordy Baller took that and ran with it [00:23:00] and had a lot of, uh, work on minerality.

I was interested in wine, food pairings when I came back here. Um, there was three papers at that point. One person's PhD in Sweden. And so we did a, a couple of studies on wine food pairings and then other people ran with it and produced a lot more studies on wine, food pairings. I started talking and get bored with and go to something else.

There's a fair amount of that through, through career.

[00:23:29] Isabelle: Yeah. You must be an entrepreneur at your heart.

[00:23:32] Hildegarde: Yeah, probably. Let's try this. Oh, that sounds interesting. Ah, I don't really think I wanna work on that anymore.

[00:23:40] Isabelle: Yeah. So you mentioned the food and wine pairing, uh, paper. And, you receive an amazing award from the ASEV, the American Society of Enology and Viticulture, and I read your paper about, your description of your career and the important moments in your career.

And, and one of the statement that you make is, this [00:24:00] research grabbed a lot of attention from the media, but. You had a hard time to really explain to them, what this paper was, was about. So can you tell us a little bit about, the misunderstanding or maybe they had expectations and, and you had different, uh, objectives.

[00:24:16] Hildegarde: Okay, so we, yeah. So we did this study where we were looking at the effect of different types of cheeses on different types of red wines. Yeah. And basically what we found is in general, if you have no cheese involved. The wine it has is more flavorful than if you have any cheese involved. Now, some cheeses will make less of an effect and some cheeses will make more of an effect.

But all cheese dampens down what you get when you have the wine by itself, which makes sense from sensory perspective because as we put to say sweet and sour to, or let's do bitter and sweet because we add sugar to our coffee to make it less bitter. I don't, because I don't taste bitter, but the bitterness [00:25:00] goes down and the sweetness goes down.

The amount of sugar we add is not as sweet as if it was just sugar in itself. That happens with all things. Mm-hmm. And so if you have cheese and you have wine, the expectation should be that they both go down. And sure enough, that's what we found. And it was interesting. It was fascinating, but it was not earth shattering to a sensory scientist.

It just fit into what we knew about how the census work. Well, the popular press went running with it and one of the one of the headlines was something well have, have any kind of plunk with your teeth. 'cause it doesn't matter. No, it still matters. The wine is still different. It's just less than it was before.

I had so many arguments with, with journalists and it got more and more. I mean, I think there was one week where I talked to two, 300 journalists around the world and I got more and more frustrated and I finally just went, if this is what they feel, think about research about wine, what do they do about research, about something that's really [00:26:00] important?

And so it's been really, uh, it was an eye-opener. Yeah. And just they came in with one view and they did not want to hear what the science actually said. It was really quite frustrating.

[00:26:13] Isabelle: Amazing. Right? Yeah. So talking about food and wine pairing. Now, after doing this, this first study and what, you know from the literature and your own experiences, because I know you're foodie and you love wine and you love food.

So if you had. Two minutes to teach me or anybody listening to the show, what makes the best food and wine pairing

[00:26:38] Hildegarde: the food you like and the wine you like.

[00:26:41] Isabelle: That's it. It two minutes

[00:26:43] Hildegarde: elaborate please. Okay, so having just said, when you have the two things together, you decrease the sensations of both and that's standard.

The thing about it is there's also our brains get involved in this and that doesn't have anything to do what's actually happening with our sensory [00:27:00] apparatus. It's what our brains think. Yes. So if you go, if I go to France and I go to actually Cais, it would be the example I'm going to give. And I had er base.

And I had some wine from the area, and the two things were just absolutely glorious together. Glorious in every possible way. It made the better. It made the wine better. Everything was better. I was sitting five feet from the ocean. It was a beautiful day. I was on vacation. All of these things go together.

I didn't do this for this wine, but if I brought that wine home and I made a ES and I had it, it would not be so magical because the magic was not just in the wine. It was not just in the food. The magic was in the entire package. I was with somebody I really liked. I was in a situation. I was calm and everything was wonderful.

Yeah. Then once in a while you [00:28:00] have one of those experiences and you bring the wine home and the second time you have it, it is as magical as the first time. Mostly 'cause you remember the first time and the wine is now imbued in rose colored glasses, for lack of a better word. Yep. So there's that, that happens and, and there are situations where the wine and the food just becomes magical in your mind.

Or you have, you sit at a, uh, in a fancy restaurant and they give you three different glasses of wine and one steak, and you taste them and you realize after a while that the middle wine is, or the second wine or whatever, is the one that just goes beautifully. And then you look at your husband and he thinks it's actually the first wine.

Third one. It, it, it's totally individualized. Absolutely. When you study this, we find out that the changes are very, very small. And in order to really exacerbate them, make them big. And they're not, still not big, big. We have to have both wine and the food in our mouth at the same time. Well, we don't actually drink wine [00:29:00] that way.

We no have a mouth full of food. We sit. If you're American, you have a glass of water, you have some wine, you talk some more, you have some more food, you have a drink of water, you have some wine, and so it really doesn't matter because these things are never right on top of each other. So that brings me to what I told you when you told me I have two minutes.

If you have a wine you like, doesn't matter what wine it is, and you have a food you like, they're going to go together. I don't know about your house, but my house is a. Explosion of colors, and I think most people walk in and go, oh, my habits do. We really have to have these explosions of color. But my husband and I love that.

I don't ask other people whether they like the way I decorated my home. It's fine. Similarly, I don't ask other people whether they like the wine food combinations I like because they're mine. And so I truly, truly believe that you should drink the wine you love [00:30:00] with the fruit you love. And it'll always work.

[00:30:04] Isabelle: And 100%, I know that, the first answer you gave me is the answer that I give everybody. And of course, they're frustrated. So, I will borrow some of your, , examples to elaborate my own answers. And I hope that, people understand that it's really personal. It's about your preference.

There is no wrong or right. And, uh, indeed, if you like the wine and for some reason, you know, if you think that, the food doesn't go with the wine. What I say to people say, well, drink the wine, enjoy it, and then have the food and enjoy it. And, , it's, doesn't matter.

It's not a bad pairing, it's just that you have your preferences

[00:30:42] Hildegarde: and it's, it's, it's. Temporal it goes away. You not just be eating this food for the next year, unlike painting the walls of your house. So you know, you commit to something for the next hour and at the end of it, no, I really didn't like that food, or I didn't really like that wine.

So the next time you don't get that wine, you [00:31:00] get some other wine, and then you find something else that actually does go with the food for you, whereas somebody else may be sitting there. This is the best thing I've ever had.

[00:31:09] Isabelle: So if you had any question about food and wine pairing, I hope that we answered that question.

So, one aspect I would like to mention now or talk about now is, as an academic you rely a lot on. Funding for, working on projects you're passionate about and you think, , will have an impact, whether, in the society or, in, in the industry. So, I guess it's maybe a, a tough question and maybe, it will help,

our funders. Think about that. What was, now is there any wine or sensory research project that you, which you , had the opportunity to, to conduct if you had received the funding, uh, the adequate funding to really, do what you thought was really important?

[00:31:53] Hildegarde: So first of all, sensory funding is really difficult to come by.

Sensory funding, usually sensory funding [00:32:00] is at the end of the product scale. So somebody in the vi in the viticulture says, oh, I'm gonna do this in the vineyard and then we're gonna make wine and then we're gonna taste it. Or some we're gonna do something in the winery and then we're gonna taste it. So we always tend to work with other people.

Um, usually I will then sort of leverage that into something else at the same time. So direct sensory funding was always very difficult to come by. I was incredibly lucky. When, uh, Jerry Lore, the then owner of Lohr Family Vineyards, gave me a fairly substantial amount of money, uh, in the late 2000, 2008, 2009, to do research on anything I wanted to, and, that money I eed out over the next 17 years. We still have a little bit of it left. Wow. It allowed me to work on the things that I really wanted to work on, like this minerality study that nobody else was going to fund to work. Uh, we did some packaging work that nobody else was going to fund. We did some [00:33:00] work on smoke tape that nobody else was going to fund.

This is before it became a huge financial crisis and that. Flexibility made an enormous difference in my life, and I would suggest to anybody who has some free cash that's the way you're supposed to do it. The result is there's not very much that I want, that I would've wanted to do that I didn't do.

There are a few things on tannin that I have some ideas on, and nobody was ever willing to fund it. But in general, I feel quite satisfied and I really do have to thank my fairy godfather for that.

[00:33:35] Isabelle: Yeah. Reme, remember meeting, um, Mr. Lohr and, uh, really he was, he's the champion of research, so, definitely.

So, I mean, this question is maybe a bit at odd, what's a piece of advice someone told you when you were figuring out, how to work in the wine industry that you wish you hadn't listened to?

[00:33:56] Hildegarde: Ooh. Well first of all, the advice I [00:34:00] got when I wanted to work in the wine industry were along the lines of, you're perfect for this job, but you're a woman and we are not gonna hire a woman. Or You're perfect for this job and, but we're not gonna hire you 'cause you're just gonna get married and have babies.

Those pieces of information were pretty much, I got that 17 times the year I graduated. Oh my God. Because, my God, my new jobs, there were nine of us. I went to 17 interviews and or some version of the above.

[00:34:27] Isabelle: Prejudice and it has changed, but there are still, you know, it's really not

[00:34:30] Hildegarde: true. 'cause some of the best wine makers in the world at this point are female and some of the great wine makers are male.

It doesn't actually matter because wine is wine and it doesn't ask you whether you are male or female. I truly believe that women can have children and still make good wine. I believe men can have children and still have good wine, so, so I don't really have anything like that. I do have. A [00:35:00] personal thing I used to say to myself as I said, yeah, I went from wanting to be a winemaker to be wanting a professor in sensory science when that was truly didn't seem like it was possible.

And my mantra throughout my career has been, it will work out. Yeah, just put the work in and it will work out. Whatever the it is it'll work out. So I think that's probably how I got through life is it will work out and sometimes it works out in a way that you didn't think it was going to, and sometimes something entirely different happens, but it works out.

[00:35:38] Isabelle: Yeah. Everything is figureoutable. That's another quote that exactly that I. Remind myself sometimes, um, yeah, when you're in the ditch, but yeah, everything is figure outable. So for our listeners, winery owners or tasting room managers, people on the hospitality side, what advice would you give them, , if they [00:36:00] wanted to adopt one simple.

Step to adopt sensory driven practices in their operations, whether, behind the tasting bar or, , when they are blending, whatever the, examples you want to select. But what a simple thing could they do to re ensure that their tastings are a bit more objective and or that they understand better the consumers?

[00:36:21] Hildegarde: Okay, so the first thing is. If you are working in the wine industry, you have to taste as much wine as possible. Not only your own, not only your own region, but every region and every style and everything. The more you do the better wine maker you will be. The second thing is another mantra of mine is that words of meaning.

Yeah, and in order to communicate, we need to understand the same meaning for the word. Probably one of the things that drives me crazy is Americans telling me that Sauvignon Blanc smells like gooseberries, and then I say Indian gooseberries, Chinese Gooseberries, Cape [00:37:00] Gooseberries, or European gooseberries.

There's another 10 other versions, but those are the easiest ones to find pictures of. The Chinese gooseberry is a Kiwi. A Indian gooseberry is usually eaten as a pickle. Mm-hmm. A European gooseberry is related to gais, and the Cape gooseberry is related to tomatillos. Which of these are you talking about?

And the only way we can understand which Gooseberry you're talking about is to actually taste the gooseberries and then say, this is the gooseberry we were talking about. So the one thing I absolutely tell people is to make reference standard. You buy, go to the grocery store and buy every fruit and vegetable you can put them in a gloss, macerate them up, put them in the gloss by themselves.

Put them in the gloss with some water, put them in the gloss with a little bit of wine or with some alcohol. Smell them. What? What did you just smell? How did they change when you did them in water versus no water versus alcohol? The more you use your nose, the more you use words that have meaning [00:38:00] because you have a reference standard.

The better you are going to be at your job, whatever job it is, including

[00:38:05] Isabelle: communicating with consumers. Train your nose, listen to your nose. Like Anne would say, like Anne would say, use your nose. Absolutely. I, I had the, privilege to train, a few people that way and, , they were training for the diploma or whatever WSET levels.

Yeah. And they were all confused and, you know, didn't know what pair drops were. And uh, yeah. So you knows some pair

[00:38:28] Hildegarde: drops.

[00:38:29] Isabelle: Yeah, exactly. So you need to have. , To smell the real product, but in the water or in wine, , that's really when you really train your brain to connect, , the scent with, , the label.

And, uh, that's great. Great advice. Thank you so much, Hildegarde. Is there anything that you wanted me to ask you that maybe you want to talk about?

[00:38:50] Hildegarde: I, I think you've covered it all. It's been fun.

[00:38:53] Isabelle: Yeah, it's been fun to have you and uh, really enjoy uh, our conversation. And, [00:39:00] uh, there I say that it is your final year teaching at the, at at at Davis.

It is my final

[00:39:04] Hildegarde: year of teaching. It's, uh, a little odd to think that I'm not gonna do this after this, but it's also really exciting 'cause I'm not totally sure where to say it.

[00:39:14] Isabelle: Yeah. So if people want to, get in touch with you, of course they can show up at the Robert Mondavi Institute, but , can they find you on on any social?

[00:39:22] Hildegarde: You can find me online. I am the only yelder guard Haman that I know of with an e and an N in the world. So amazing. Good for me. They'll find me

[00:39:31] Isabelle: making sure to have that in your biography. Okay. Thank you so much. You welcome. And uh, it was a really pleasure.

And that's it for today's episode of We Taste Wine Differently if you enjoyed it. Please subscribe or follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to [00:40:00] learn more about how I can help you and your team implement a century driven tasting experience, visit my website at innovinum.com It's I-N-N-O-V-I-N-U M.com, and have a gift waiting for you there.

It's a free resource to discover the five mistakes turning guests away, and how to fix them fast. It includes a tool. To assess practices in your testing room, you will also find the direct link to download this paper and the tool in the show notes. A bientot.

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