We Taste Wine Differently | Creating Consumer Loyalty with Unforgettable Wine Experiences · Isabelle Lesschaeve

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

·41 min·2 clips

Dr. Heymann says Sauvignon Blanc "smells like gooseberries" is too vague without tasting the actual gooseberries.

1. We Taste Wine Differently focuses on Dr. Hildegarde Heymann’s sensory training, wine education, and grape-and-wine research at UC Davis. 2. Isabelle Le Chave hosts the episode and introduces Dr. Hildegarde Heymann as a Distinguished Professor and Enologist at the University of California, Davis, and co-author with Dr. Harry Lawless of The Sensory Evaluation of Food. 3. The episode asks how sensory science can train future winemakers to taste, describe, and judge wine more consistently. 4. Heymann says she grew up in South Africa, where her parents let her drink wine at Sunday lunch, and she first chose winemaking because it combined biology, chemistry, and plant science. 5. She says she became the first woman to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in Oenology and Viticulture from the University of Stellenbosch in 1977. 6. After working on 200 research wines and early additions of YAN, she moved to UC Davis for a master’s degree in food science with Oenology as the emphasis area. 7. She describes taking Rosemary Pangborn’s sensory course by accident in January 1980 and deciding five weeks later that she wanted to spend her life doing sensory science. 8. Heymann says she returned to South Africa, then came back to Davis in fall 1981, completed a PhD in agricultural chemistry with flavor chemistry and sensory science, and later taught at the University of Missouri. 9. She says the Davis courses were built in two stages: a sophomore Wines of the World class and a senior sensory evaluation class. 10. In the sophomore class, students taste 10 wines a week for nine weeks under California rules that allow controlled tasting if they spit. 11. She says the goal is to expose students to lesser-known regions and varieties, reduce intimidation, and help them talk about what they taste, feel, and see. 12. In the senior class, students taste 60 wines, including intentional oxidation, unintentional oxidation, and bubbles from around the world, with more formal expectations. 13. Heymann says the biggest classroom goal is to create trust so students can speak up without being dominated by one or two loud voices. 14. She says sensory scientists are trained to moderate groups, acknowledge dominant speakers, and still make room for consensus. 15. On industry use, she says wine students will not all become sensory scientists, but they will all consume sensory data when reading papers or evaluating supplier claims. 16. She says winemakers must know where they are blind, using TCA, bitterness, and her own sensitivity to apple acetate as examples of inter-individual differences. 17. She describes throwing reference standards at students so they can identify their own blind spots and find trusted tasters for traits they cannot reliably detect. 18. The episode is conversational and classroom-oriented, with Isabelle Le Chave frequently pushing for practical implications for wineries, tasting rooms, and consumer communication. 19. Sensory educators, winery teams, and students learning wine language will get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners looking for a purely technical or highly theoretical debate may skip it.

As heard by us

Sensory training is framed as a practical advantage for wine professionals facing bigger competitors.

The episode presents sensory training as a practical business edge for wine professionals, especially smaller wineries trying to stand out against larger competitors that already use sensory data to sell wines.

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Why you'd press play

You get a blunt lesson in why your palate needs backup.

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