Your Tasting Brain: A Sensory Approach to Wine, Beer, and Other Pleasures

A scintillating invitation to enrich our culinary pursuits by understanding how our bodies turn a taste into flavor, emotion, and meaning. Our foodscape has never been more adventurous, but fully experiencing the subtleties of complex cheeses, wines, or cocktails can be challenging. No longer! In Your Tasting Brain, bestselling food writer Randy Mosher assures us that we can all become master tasters by learning more about the brilliant ways our bodies translate smell, taste, and mouthfeel into flavor—without needing to know everything about terroir, varietals, or exotic ingredients. In Your Tasting Brain, Mosher shares a road map to send us on our tasting journey, one that connects the worlds of science and art. Our bodies are more finely tuned tasting machines than we realize, Mosher explains. Even a simple grasp of how our senses interact with the world can enhance our culinary delight—and Mosher offers us a tantalizing framework, from how our brain processes, categorizes, and rewards (or punishes) encounters with chemicals in food, all the way to how aromas and flavors spur us to language, emotion, and creativity. Overflowing with scientific insight and practical advice, Your Tasting Brain is an appetizing guide for anyone looking to enhance the pleasures they find in food through attention, curiosity, and practice.