Wine Smelling 101

The 2007 Complete Wine Course is out. And in it is a chapter that Kevin Zraly and I co-authored on the incredible sense of SMELL, and how key smell is to our enjoyment of wine…and all else in life.

How does our sense of smell work? Why is it so evocative of emotion, so central to memory and so critical to happiness, health, learning and love?

How does smell vary across cultures and evolve and devolve over a lifetime?

How can we keep our sense of smell intact and alive longer, and use it more fully and joyously?

Kevin and I agree: One of the most pleasurable ways to train, strengthen and preserve our all-important sense of smell is through mindfully savoring wine.

For every good reason, we hope you will ENJOY Wine Smelling 101, and we hope you will smell wine with us sometime soon!

Warmly and looking forward,
Kevin and Wendy

Wendy's Wine Workout:Tastings to Train Senses & Brain

It’s a great time to be drinking wine! Never has the quality been higher, the selection greater, the prices more reasonable.

And it’s good for us, too. Among wine’s ever-growing attributes, studies show that moderate consumption can prevent heart attacks and strokes, aid digestion, lower blood pressure and cholesterol and reduce the risks of certain cancers and degenerative diseases.

Now, The Senses Bureau adds to these benefits through The Wine Workout, wherein tasting wine becomes a training ground for the senses, memory and mind.

Through a series of enjoyable experiences and exercises, savoring wine becomes the practice that:

• Deepens curiosity and elevates learning
• Strengthens the senses, singly and in concert
• Builds a vocabulary with which to express impressions and perceptions
• Enhances the way memories are made, stored and retrieved
• Clarifies personal preferences and style
• Promotes relaxation, conversation, stimulation, realization

While The Wine Workout elucidates the multi-faceted magnificence that resides in each well-made bottle of wine -- the embodiment of time and place, vines and grapes, soil and weather, nature and art -- it also acknowledges that that’s just where the beauty starts! Of equal wonder is what takes place within us when we experience wine -- from anticipation to articulation, from awakened and enlivened senses to the creation, integration and consolidation of memories.

Right and left brain, and numerous other parts of the body and mind, collaborate and communicate in making memories and keeping them alive. But there are few places that they work together as powerfully or as pleasurably as in tasting, describing, and remembering wine.

We hope you will join us for upcoming Wine Workouts that will feature some of our favorite tasters and tastings…and that you’ll invite us to organize a Wine Workout for you and your group.

For details, please e-mail wendy@thesensesbureau.com .

Meantime, happy tastings to you. And please check out Coming to Your Senses, about enjoying wine in and with every sense, and WineSmelling 101, a chapter that Kevin Zraly and I co-authored for his 2007 Complete Wine Course.

Note: Photo thanks to Richard Lewin

The Power of Touch

Hooray to Nivea for their Nivea Touches New York exhibit at 31 W. 19th Street in NYC through Oct. 14.

The interactive experience includes “Feel Your Way” and “Different Strokes” sculptures, “SkinScapes” photos, massage, many reasons to touch and be touched, and reminders that:

• Skin is our body's largest and most sensitive organ
• Each fingertip has more than 3,000 touch receptors
• The human hand contains 100,000 nerves

"TOUCH," says the exhibit, "is how we express love, comapassion, understanding and comfort. It is the physical manifestation of emotional closeness. Nivea exists so your skin can touch and be touched."

Now that's a brand we can feel good about!