Can metaphors help us better remember wines? The effect of wine evaluation style on short-term recognition of red wines.

People are generally poor at remembering complex food stimuli, such as wine. While writing a description has been shown to improve memory performance, talking about wine is generally a difficult task for novices. However, giving novices a framework in which to evaluate the wine may help with the memory process. Using a short-term recognition task, this experiment compared different forms of wine evaluation on the to-be-remembered wine sample, using either 1) a classic smell and taste evaluation, 2) a multisensory metaphor selection task with visual, auditory, and tactile metaphors, or 3) a control condition with no writing. Results from 153 participants revealed that recognition performance between the three groups was not significantly different. Secondary analysis revealed that recognition accuracy was correlated with wine liking for the control group, suggesting that in the absence of explicitly evaluating the wine, participants relied on wine liking as a cue for memory. Implications for theory development and applications in wine education are discussed.