Synesthesia: Tasting shapes?

There is a sensory experience that some folks have where they SMELL numbers or SEE  sounds.  Jimi Hendrix HEARD the color blue and physician Richard Cytowic wrote about one of his patients who tasted an angular chicken. Check out his interesting book “The Man who Tasted Shapes.”

Synesthesia is a state in which sensory experiences are cross-wired in the brain.  Some say this is ‘pathological’ while others like winemaker Randall Grahm say we should all be synesthetes when it comes to wine – to use all of our senses.

The legendary maestro of California wine Andre Tchelistcheff is said to have experienced wines in bigger shapes after he stopped smoking.

When I taste wine I experience it as smooth or angular, rough or soft.  My language lacks poetic descriptions yet my photography shows shapes in wine and the chemicals of taste that are intriguing to those of us lost in our senses.  The first wine I ever photographed “looked like it tasted” according to its winemaker Theo Rosenbrand.  And since then I’ve been exploring the science and pleasure of our senses.

Do you taste shapes?  Do you prefer angular or rounded wines?  Would their shape influence what food you’d match with them?

Here are two Napa Valley wines, one is a cab, the other a merlot – which is which?

The above image is a pinot noir from Kosta Browne.