Blame it on Rioja

A friend of mine who, like me, has grappled with the lures and snares of cigarette addiction over the years, told me recently that a long period of non smoking once ended quite abruptly after viewing “Dont Look Back,” D.A. Pennebaker’s black-and-white mini-chronicle of Bob Dylan’s 1965 UK tour, in which our star is seen smoking pretty much at all times.

I thought about this while reading “Music ‘Can Enhance Wine Taste,’” a BBC News report of a university study on wine and music, which found that “people rated the change in taste by up to 60% depending on the melody heard.

“The researchers said cabernet sauvignon was most affected by ‘powerful and heavy’ music, and chardonnay by ‘zingy and refreshing’ sounds.”

For anyone who has ever entered a rowdy country music bar in the middle of a perfectly respectable work day and, upon hearing Johnny Cash singing ‘Folsom Prison Blues,’ begins to rationalize that a shot of Patron silver tequila with a Pabst Blue Ribbon back would be a capital idea, these findings are old news.

Every moment has a vibe, and every vibe has the right soundtrack. And every soundtrack has the right kind of drink. The interplay of those three elements has always been fascinating to me. In many ways, the degree to which I vibe with people socially is a function of their sensitivity to those moments, those changes in vibe and the way all three elements come together.

The moment itself is usually the most decisive component in this trifecta; like matching a wine to a main course, it’s up to us to find the right beverage (and song) to go with a given moment. But sometimes a wine or a song can dictate the other two elements, and that where this study (and the Johnny Cash example) comes in:

“Professor [Adrian] North, [who administered the study, previously] conducted supermarket research which suggested people were five times more likely to buy French wine than German wine if accordion music was played in the background. If an oompah band was played, the German product outsold the French by two to one.”

This entry was posted on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 11:51 am and is filed under General, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.