THE PHYSIOLOGY OF HUMAN SENSORY RESPONSE TO WINE - A REVIEW

Wine is an complex beverage, from a sensory as well as a chemical poin t of view. Wine can elicit a large number of olfactory responses, in a ddition to the taste responses of sweet, sour, and bitter, and the ora l sensations of astringency, irritation, viscosity, and temperature. T he physiology underlying the transduction of these sensory signals is equally complex, and is just beginning to be understood. It is now kno wn that a large number of olfactory receptors are expressed in the olf actory epithelium, with axonal convergence at the glomeruli level in t he olfactory bulb. There appear to be at least two antagonistic second -messenger systems utilized in olfactory transduction. Gustation, on t he other hand, appears to utilize a variety of transduction mechanisms , including direct ion influx, receptor-dependent and receptor-indepen dent ion channels, and regulation of membrane permeability. Oral sensa tion represents a third frontier of study; current research indicates that we have yet to develop an effective language for describing the b readth of perceived oral sensations. The implications of differential response for olfactory and gustatory sensory research are briefly disc ussed.