But this time I was – intentionally – in a hypnotic trance.
I must say here that my lovely wife is a psychologist who practices clinical hypnosis. This approach to therapy has nothing to do with stage shows, where the subject in a trance moves like a dolphin. Nor is it like those one-session quit-smoking offers you see advertised on Day-Glo cards at busy intersections.
As practiced by a mental health professional, clinical hypnosis is a technique where the client is led into a state of deep relaxation and then offered a set of suggestions, often highly metaphorical, that address the issues to solve. There is a lot of good research pointing to its effectiveness.
Clinical hypnosis can eliminate the rational mind, removing barriers to change.
And it turns out that rational mind gets in the way when you try to fully experience – smell, explore, savor – the remarkably complex and often enchanting aromas and flavors of a well-made wine.
In short: Hypnosis allows you to drink with the right side of your brain.
The wine-industrial complex reinforces the left-brain approach to wine. Labels, tasting notes, books, apps, area guides, shelf labels, those well-studied sommeliers, “The Wine Show” (sue me) all indicate that certain wines carry aromas and specific and detectable flavors.
And recreational drinkers end up feeling like we should smell those smells and taste those tastes. So we have a hard time identifying specific scents. But we have limited aroma vocabularies and limited exposure to the range of smells in the worlds of agriculture and nature.
Raspberry, cherries, apples, grapefruit? Sure, I can identify those grocery store smells, even when tasting blind. It’s a fun party game. I think they used to do that at baby showers.
Black currant, boysenberry, lavender, guava, honeysuckle, persimmon, moss, leather, limestone… all of these adjectives have appeared in customer reviews about a single merlot on the Vivino wine app. Who the hell even knows what boysenberry smells like?
I am of course stuck somewhere in “raspberries, I think, and wood”. And feeling like I’m completely missing out on a really big sensory party behind a velvet rope.
Humiliated and distraught, I bought one of those (expensive!) kits with bottles of 46 different essences, from anise to tamarind. I waved the bottle of honeysuckle essence under my nose, then sniffed a glass of wine that was supposed to carry delicate aromas of sweet honeysuckle.
Or, worse, under the power of suggestion and peer pressure, I think I feel it. A little. Wait…oh shit, sure, yeah, honeysuckle, I think so, whatever. Fill my glass, please, and I’ll try to smell the lychee.
One evening, as I was making somber notes in my wine journal, I got to thinking. How can I pass this true-false sensory test of learning about wine, but enjoy it more?
Just then, my wife came up from her desk. She poured herself a glass of Sancerre and told me she had a nice new client she was going to use hypnosis with.
The hypnotic induction my wife uses for our wine tasting goes like this: we first close our eyes and relax our bodies, holding our glasses in our hands. She invites us to become aware of our breathing, then uses a kind of induction to take us deeper. Sometimes it means looking up three times; sometimes it’s just a matter of deeply imagining a relaxing scene.
She tells us to simply imagine opening our minds, our noses and our mouths, emptying it all out and fully giving our senses to what they are about to experience.
Notably, I am not “asleep” or in a “trance”. Basically I’m relaxed and my rational brain has been put on timeout.
At his signal, we raise our wine glasses to our noses and inhale. And let’s expire.
In this state, I no longer try to identify the “good” aromas. I slowly let my body absorb the smells and invite my imagination to take over.
Under hypnosis, I experimented with the same Merlot whose abundant tasting notes I mentioned above. Absorbing the aromas with my frontal cortex on leave, I imagined…a wooden trellis climbing up the side of the glass, interwoven with red licorice candies, leading directly to my nose.
With other wines, I’ve seen shavings of burgundy curl up on one of those old elementary school manual pencil sharpeners.
A red blend summoned a Christmas cookie with a hint of cherry.
I once saw a chain-link fence with wildflowers climbing over it. It was another pinot noir.
Once I smelled a wet wallet in a California cab. I took cherry candy sand from a Cotes du Rhone.
Another time, with a Sancerre, a small street after a lukewarm rain.
With one of these New Zealand Cabernet Sauvignons, I saw a grapefruit and a peach come out of the glass in three dimensions.
Another time: blue cotton candy. I forgot what wine it was.
And no, I was not under the influence of “magic mushrooms”. Just a sip or two of wine at around 13 percent alcohol.
The funny thing is that none of these sensory observations are so far from what the expertocracy of wine expresses.
My burgundy pencil shavings? I guess my imagination was processing the same aromas that wine writers call “graphite,” as well as berries, cherries, or dark red fruits that my inexperienced brain couldn’t distinguish.
That wooden trellis with wildflowers? A reviewer might say “slightly floral on the nose, with a base of robust American oak.” (See, I’m getting good at this!)
The wet wallet: “Notes of leather.”
The street after the rain? “A line of traversing minerality.”
The four-legged plum? OK, that’s more difficult. Maybe… “Plush summer stone fruit notes.”
What I think my brain is doing when under the influence of hypnosis is absorbing the aromas and, bypassing my frontal cortex, associating them with memories, images and the little bits of stories, emotions and sensations that are packed into it like stuff in a madman’s attic.
I don’t know what to make of all this. My main conclusion is that while we know that drinking too much alcohol harms your brain, we can also say that your brain harms your experience.e with alcohol. Dismissing it adds another dimension to the appreciation of the wine. It transforms precise molecular inputs and acute sensory processing systems into fluid storytelling.
I think sommeliers would have more fun if they tasted wines in a hypnotic trance from time to time. I know their customers would.
That said, one person’s fantasies produced during a hypnotic tasting probably aren’t useful to anyone else. I don’t think your experience of a glass of merlot would be improved if you knew that on my first sniff, I saw a sockless rodeo clown polishing the floors of a Costco after midnight. (I just made that up, but I have to say I’d take a case of anything.)
Even the wine industry will tell you that the most important thing is to find a wine you like.
For me, hypnotic drinking helps me appreciate almost any wine. It can turn an $11 zinfandel into a special occasion.
Or, every evening, a four-legged plum.
Craig Stoltz is a wine, food and travel writer and blogger.
