Is your pinot noir smelling a little funk? Perhaps your chips are on the salty side, or your chocolate is strangely bitter?
Industry experts warn that food and drink are tasting different to how they did before the pandemic because so many sommeliers and expert tasters lost their sense of taste and smell after catching covid.
Wine producers and research chefs were impaired and food product teams were forced to come up with alternative ways of deciding on flavours and formulas with some bypassing research chefs and tasting panels altogether.
The unfortunate predicament has forced some sommeliers and chefs to keep their condition quiet, while others have signed up for courses to retrain their senses in secret.
The winners were companies like Analytical Flavour Systems, a United States business that uses artificial intelligence to model people’s preferences when it comes to flavour, aroma and texture.
Derailed by anosmia – the partial or full loss of smell – many food producers bypassed their usual approach of asking research chefs to come up with gold-standard recipes and went straight to their A1 platform instead. ‘The pandemic was very good for our business,’ said Analytical Flavour Systems founder and chief executive Jason Cohen. ‘Companies couldn’t hold tasting panels because of social distancing rules, and when chefs couldn’t taste, we had more companies coming directly to us.’
The experience of lockdowns has also affected people’s palates, and will also start to seep into the recipes and formulas that are made. For example, while stuck at home, people drank fewer soft drinks, which has lowered their tolerance for artificial sweeteners. ‘Quarantine has been the largest consumer shock since rationing. We’re seeing huge shifts,’ Cohen said. ‘The world is not going to taste the same as it did before Covid.’
Analytical Flavour Systems has in the past been asked to help reformulate recipes for cancer patients and the elderly. Cohen said this could start to happen if it became clear that people’s senses had been permanently affected by Covid.
Across the industry, experts have been retraining their senses, from wine producers and restaurant sommeliers to food and drink tastes. ‘It will have affected the production of wine. I will have been asking for a second opinion by getting another professional to help,’ said Federica Zanghirella, vice-president of the UK Sommelier Association.
Zanghirella, who temporarily lost her sense of smell in the middle of a class she was leading in March 2020, added; ‘Some students say they couldn’t tell their bosses or head sommeliers, because it was too risky for their careers, so they had to use their knowledge of ingredients and flavours.’
She added that restaurant sommeliers, who pair wines with dishes on-site, had been struggling in particular.
Industries beyond food and drink have also been affected. Isabelle Gelle, the founder of the Perfumery Art School, said half of her students were now retraining after losing their sense of smell. Her clients run businesses across Britain, including soap and scents candle shops.
© Telegraph Media Group Limited 2022
