On Tasting Pomegranates and the Next Tasting Note Sensation

A recent Wall Street Journal article suggested that the American palate is evolving toward more intense and exotic taste sensations – “adrenaline cuisine” as the author dubbed the phenomenon.  While one might consider this trend validation for the popularity of “big wine” over a more refined style, more interesting, however, is how new taste sensations make their way into wine tasting notes.

Consider the pomegranate, for example.

Over twenty-five years ago, my social studies teacher brought a pomegranate to class as a part of a Native American Indian diet lesson. She was careful to peel the foreign-looking fruit, and then gently pull out the delicate juicy nubs, divvying up the small kernels while admonishing us to not get any of the staining juice on our shirts. This was the first—and last—time I saw the pomegranate until the early 2000s when scientific research surfaced touting the fruit’s antioxidant properties.

Then, in 2002, an opportunistic California company resurrected the nationally moribund pomegranate industry, creating Pom Wonderful pomegranate juice. A trend was ignited, and soon an entire industry sprang up around the use of the pomegranate in all manner of edibles.

This anecdote would be germane to little more than observation were it not for the preponderance of pomegranate references in contemporary wine tasting notes … tasting notes that, coincidentally, started immediately after the introduction of Pom Wonderful in 2002.

To test my hunch that so-called “adrenaline cuisine” influences wine tasting descriptors, I conducted an analysis of Wine Spectator’s ratings database, comprising 232,000 reviews and tasting notes dating back to the mid-80s.

A search of the WS review database retrieved 546 wine reviews with “pomegranate” as a tasting note descriptor.  Wouldn’t you know it, but of those 546 wine reviews, a mere nine pomegranate references occurred in vintages released to market prior to 2002 — the year, again, that Pom Wonderful launched.

Coincidence?  Surely not.  However, it’s not necessarily a conspiracy, either. Rather, it’s a statement about the evolution of our palates: we taste flavor components in wine based on what our palates know, and prior to 2002 not many people knew the taste of a pomegranate.

Aside from the pomegranate, The Wall Street Journal article caused me to wonder about the next big flavor in wine tasting notes. After all, before the Asian food aisle at the grocery store expanded beyond chop suey, nobody used “lychee” to describe Gewürztraminer, either.

I conducted fruit trend research to determine what might be the next pomegranate or lychee in our tasting notes.

Fruit trends come to market via three channels:

• Niche health foods and juices

• The produce aisle

• Flavorings for mass market foods

You can find examples for each that don’t necessarily cross over to the other.  Goji berries and the mangosteen live in the health food section.  Star fruit lives in the produce aisle and dragon fruit primarily exists in processed flavorings.

While the wine taster is influenced by new flavors that crossover to the wine palate, it seems that we pick up most of our influences from whole foods.  A dragon fruit flavored chewing gum does not a wine descriptor make.  Nor does a super food juice drink from the likes of the noni tree or the goji berry.

So, I’d postulate that the best predictor of new flavors in tasting notes is the fruit in the produce section. A glance at the California Rare Fruit Growers web site and additional research analyzing yield, perishability and distribution to supermarkets suggests two upcoming fruits the wine enthusiast should taste:

Cherimoya: Soft scoopable white flesh tastes like a blend of pineapple, mango, and banana with a tinge of strawberry.

Star fruit:  Slice and eat, or eat out of hand like an apple.  Very subtle.  Tastes like a plum with subtle tropical hints.

In short, a new taste sensation—even one super-charged by marketing hype or made into a processed confection—doesn’t necessarily translate to a desire for bigger flavors in wines. But these new influences do broaden our taste sensations and pique our interest in the fruits that inspire them.

So, go get a cherimoya and remain mindful that the next decade’s wine tasting note reference point, equivalent to a pomegranate, is likely in a produce section near you.