Session 7
Paradigm Shifts & Sensory Pleasures
15 July 2020
Is it time for a paradigm shift to the sensory and aesthetic experiences of food and wine?
Jacqueline Dutton
“A Rosé by any other name… The New Aesthetics of Rosé Wines”
Over the past 20 years, rosé wine has risen exponentially in popularity and production. According to Nielsen statistics, US rosé sales are rising 40% year on year, with global wine market share of rosé now at 10%. Considered in the past as a drink for those who do not usually consume wine, or as a ‘summer tipple’, with highly gendered connotations, rosé has certainly not attracted the same aesthetic interest as red or white wines.
Yet now, established wine critics have changed their position on rosé wines. Their opinions have validated rosé as a wine with more complexity and value – both cultural and economic – than previously recognized by many wine consumers. There is also significant endorsement of pale, dry Provence-style rosé wine by celebrity ‘producers’ including actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie (Miraval, Provence), and rocker Jon Bon Jovi and his son Jesse (Hampton Water, Languedoc) who make their wine with Gérard Bertrand, ex-rugby star and owner of many châteaux, including Château l’Hospitalet, renowned for its summer jazz festival. However, it is the younger Millennials or Generation Y (people born between 1980-2000) who have really led the charge towards rosé.
This paper explores the new aesthetics of rosé for each of these demographics, focusing especially on the visual perceptions (wine colour, packaging) and sensory appreciation (smell, tastings) of Milliennial consumers. In conclusion, I will present some preliminary findings of my research undertaken with an emerging category of wine consumers – Generation Z (aged between 18-25 years).
Jacqueline Dutton is a leading researcher and writer on French culture and identity, specialising in literature, food, wine, travel and utopia as intercultural products of regional, national and international geopolitics.
Catherine Lockley
Neurogastronomy, Nutrition and Nigella: Hedonic narrative as the central pillar of nutrition science and communication”
Despite advances in Nutrition science research and the publication of evidence-based Government Dietary Guidelines, our population is getting steadily fatter and sicker. Our obsession with food is matched only by our alienation from its broader narratives. What if it’s not what we’re saying, but how we’re saying it? New Research from The Australian National University suggests that gastronomical pleasure narratives are more effective in Nutrition communication than the language of ‘scienceism’.
My research builds on a growing knowledge-base in Nutrition Science that ‘health’ as the primary communications tactic in public food choice is misguided. Moreover, that people are not just tired of Nutrition messages but oppositional, reactive and angry. It’s time for a paradigm shift to pleasure, joy, flavour and individual agency in the delight of ‘healthy’ food.
Presenter: Catherine Lockley B.Sc [Food & Nutrition], MRes [Science Communication].