In this immensely popular Symposium 2014 talk, Dr. Charles Spence of Oxford University shares his perspective on how the senses other than taste and smell can dramatically affect the experience of coffee.  Expect to look at your cup of coffee totally differently after watching this talk.

More recently Dr Spence met up with Dan Pashman of the WNYC-partner podcast The Sporkful to explain the sonic seasoning theory, urging listeners to play along with the experiment using either bitter chocolate, beer or brewed coffee.

Background noise can have a dramatic impact on our sense of taste, masking our ability to perceive certain flavours (such as sweet and salty), while at the same time enhancing our ability to taste others (e.g. umami).

Loud background noises, for example, can really disrupt our sense of taste. A recent study by Bravo-Moncayo et al. (2020) showed that the subjects perceived a set of desirable properties in a coffee sample to a lesser extent when loud background music was played. This was noticeable in the bitterness and aroma intensity ratings, and resulted in a lower willingness to pay.

A total of 384 participants tasted and rated the same black coffee (a medium roasted green Arabica from Ecuador) while listening to louder or softer background noise (85 vs. 20 dB, respectively).

Some people might say : ‘why bother changing the music to improve the taste of the coffee, when you can simply pick a different coffee that is more to your taste’. Other commentators, meanwhile, might worry that a well-balanced coffee, is more likely to be knocked out of balance if music is played that is overly sweet, bitter, or acidic.

While it will clearly not be easy to offer customers such sound-flavor pairing experiences in a casual context, it is interesting to note that there is growing interest not just in modifying taster’s ratings of food and beverage, such as, for example fruitiness, acidity, or sweetness, but in actually delivering extraordinary tasting experiences that are somehow more (or greater) than the sum of their parts.

For instance, one Korean coffee shop has recently started inviting its customers to ‘fill in a form’ (on a iPad) regarding their taste preferences. The app then selects the best-matching coffee blend and musical selection. Finally, you are served a coffee with a pair of wireless headphones, in order to deliver a genuinely multisensory tasting experience.

As a sign of the times it is also worth noting that the growing interest in sonically-seasoning one’s coffee beverage has already started to appear at a number of professional barista competitions in recent years. Top barista’s such as Rasmus Helgebostad (2011 Norwegian barista championship) and Matt Winton (2018 World Barista Championship) made a sonically enhanced coffee drink a few years ago as part of their barista championships routines.

Elsewhere, in a more marketing-led intervention the Xin café in Beijing used augmented glassware to play sweet music and so reduce the sugar content in the drinks they served.

Ultimately, it is important to note that there is always a sonic backdrop to our coffee tasting experiences. It might be background noise suppressing the tasting experience or else a silence that can itself be uncomfortable/oppressive. Hence, one cannot simply ignore the auditory environment and pretend that it doesn’t exist or matter when tasting coffee.

Looking to the future, further research is needed to determine the best musical matches for the various distinctive aromas that are found in coffee (e.g., nutty, dried red fruits, chocolate, grapefruit, hazelnut, etc.)—that is, to go beyond the musical matching of taste properties.

Overall, sonic seasoning has the capability to influence or trigger a cross-modal effect in the tasting experience of food and drinks. The use of sonic seasoning could result in either a positive nutritious/healthy eating/drinking or in playful eating/drinking.

Not only can sound affect the dining experience in this way, it can also hugely impact restaurant and food marketing. Many companies are replacing background music on their adverts with the sound of food and drink, just before and during consumption. The crunchier a crisp, noisier a crisp packet, and even giving a carbonated drink extra fizz by pouring it into a glass full of ice-cubes, means consumers associate it with being fresher. Hearing the snap of a biscuit, or the pop of a can is responsible for 60% of your craving, making it just as important as your branding and message.