Assessing the Effect of Musical Congruency on Wine Tasting in a Live Performance Setting

Abstract

At a wine tasting event with live classical music, we assessed whether participants would agree that certain wine and music pairings were congruent. We also assessed the effect of musical congruency on the wine tasting experience. The participants were given two wines to taste and two pieces of music—one chosen to match each wine—were performed live. Half of the participants tasted the wines while listening to the putatively more congruent music, the rest tasted the wines while listening to the putatively less congruent music. The participants rated the wine–music match and assessed the fruitiness, acidity, tannins, richness, complexity, length, and pleasantness of the wines. The results revealed that the music chosen to be congruent with each wine was indeed rated as a better match than the other piece of music. Furthermore, the music playing in the background also had a significant effect on the perceived acidity and fruitiness of the wines. These findings therefore provide further support for the view that music can modify the wine drinking experience. However, the present results leave open the question of whether the crossmodal congruency between music and wine itself has any overarching influence on the wine drinking experience.