Does the perfect taster exist?

When forming a tasting panel, selecting the ideal individuals is one of the most daunting challenges. If we are not careful, we may end up subjecting them to thousands of tests, following the traditional selection manuals.

Personally, I believe that this recruitment process cannot simply be carried out by following one of these books. So, how should we select them? Well, it depends.

Once we have found a person who has no conditions affecting their senses, is motivated, and has a high capacity for expression and communication, the usual manuals instruct us to begin evaluating their sensory sensitivity. This is done through tests where flavours and aromas are presented in increasingly smaller quantities until their detection threshold is identified. We often assume that a taster will be better the more sensitive their senses are, but this is not always the case.

In addition to this detection threshold—the minimum stimulus they can perceive—we must also consider the saturation threshold, which is the maximum stimulus they can detect. Furthermore, we should not overlook the differentiation threshold, which is the minimum difference between two stimuli that they can identify, or sensory fatigue, which refers to the number of evaluations they can perform before losing sensitivity.

All these measurements help us understand a taster's capabilities, but we must not become fixated on just one. Depending on the situation we face, different characteristics in a taster will be preferable:

• High saturation threshold: Suitable for studying products with very intense flavours, such as cured hams.
• Low detection threshold: Ideal for identifying defects, such as detecting a DMS aroma in beer.
• Low differentiation threshold: Useful when ensuring homogeneity, for example, when analysing the same product produced in two different facilities.
• Low sensory fatigue: Beneficial for panels evaluating samples with very strong aromas and flavours or those testing a large number of samples.

Regardless of all these factors, the most important qualities a taster must have are motivation, perseverance, and discipline. A taster who trains and concentrates intensively often surpasses one with strong innate abilities.

Therefore, there is no such thing as a perfect taster, but rather an ideal taster for each situation.

Words by Andrés Martínez Sánchez, CPO at SENSESBIT