Thanks to just-drinks.com’s intrepid deputy editor, Chris Mercer, for this little piece of research. Apparently, professors the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, have found that the colour of background light can influence how a wine – and, presumably, a beer – is perceived to taste.
When roughly 500 participants were asked how they liked a particular wine and how much they would pay for it while exposed to differing background illumination, it was found that the same wine was rated higher when exposed to red or blue ambient light rather than green or white light.
What’s more, participant told researchers that they would be willing to pay in excess of a euro more per bottle of a specific Riesling when it was offered to them in red rather than green light.
So maybe Alan will buy a bottle of Tactical Nuclear Penguin after all, if the lighting is right!
Blogging at World of Beer 
I think that I can actually honour that I would buy a bottle if I could find one – assured in the knowledge that I can’t ever hope to see one on sale. TNP is turning out to be both experimental and non-commercial if I understand the number of 500 bottles made being passed around the globe as samples.
But isn’t the opposite observation also interesting. If I want a nice red Flemish ale with that glowing hue, maybe all I need to get what stimulates my senses best is another light bulb. Problem: now watch the price of bulbs go up.
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