Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/10329
EDUCATION Coming To Your ABSOLUT’S SENSORY ANALYSIS WORKSHOP ENHANCES THE VODKA EXPERIENCE by Camper English Senses “W e’ve worked a lot on the ads, we’ve worked on the bottle, but we haven’t really focused on what’s inside,” said Per Hermansson, Director of Sensory Analysis at Absolut. Hermansson wasn’t implying they haven’t been making a fine vodka all along, just that they’ve been promoting style over substance up until now. To help start a conversation about the taste of the vodka, Absolut sponsored eight-and-a-half hour Sensory Analysis Workshops in three U.S. cities: New York, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. Top mixologists and media were trained in the skills needed to better identify, describe and differentiate all types of vodka. The program will likely be expanded to more cities later this year. Seminar participants learn how aroma affects taste by blocking their noses before testing a sample. Attendees first learned about the senses and sense perception. We were challenged to identify spirits in dark glasses to demonstrate how important the sense of sight is to our determination of taste. We learned that one nostril gives us more detailed information than the other—and that the dominant nostril changes about every four hours. One’s sense of smell can be lost with a head injury, and this can lead to severe depression, as aroma is closely associated with memory and emotion—just ask Marcel Proust. Thus, much of our perception of taste comes not just from our tongues, but from our eyes, noses and even past experiences. Vodkas may taste different due to the type raw materials distilled, the process (column versus pot still distillation, how much of the heads and tails are left in, the filtration process) and other factors, such as the type of water used to dilute the vodka to bottle strength and “rounding” spirits by adding a legally-permit- ted amount of sugar or other flavor enhancers. Though professional sensory evaluators like Hermansson use more than twenty taste attributes to describe vodkas, we focused on six of them: neutral – a pure alcohol smell grainy – notes we’d expect from wheat-derived vodkas like Absolut bready – darker, baked flavors found in rye-based vodkas like Belvedere fruity /citrusy – flavors that can be found in grape-based Cîroc buttery – popcorn and custard flavors that might be from molasses or sugar-beet vodkas solvents – nail polish remover (acetone) aromas that can come from the head part of distillations The workshop presented drinks meant to challenge conceived notions of vodka use: hot and cold tea cocktails made with vodka. PHOTOS: RODNEY CHOICE FOR PERNOD RICARD Using these flavor attributes, the group was able to narrow down most of the vodkas in a blind tasting to their raw materials. The addition of a potato vodka (Karlsson’s) and corn vodka (Tito’s) in the flight added new challenges. Armed with identification skills, attendees were then presented with a glossary of around 200 suggested descriptive words—from “accentuate” to “zing”—that could be useful both in writing tasting notes of spirits and in describing cocktails on drink menus. Vodka is likely the most challenging spirit to taste and differentiate between brands, and today’s top bartenders love challenges. The Absolut Sensory Analysis Workshop tasked them to work harder to find these subtle differences, and gave them day’s worth of tools and training with which to do so. may 2010 / the tasting panel / 31