Above & Beyond Taste

The Tasting Room

Our virtual tasting room is an area dedicated to the art and science of taste. You'll find advice and fun suggestions for what pairs with what, how and more importantly why...

What is molecular sommelerie, and why do we need it?

It is the science that allows us to understand how we taste and how to create harmony with different flavours in foods and drinks, and with combination of both.

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Ask the consultants – sign up for the VIP Taste Pass

If you sign up to our VIP taste pass, you will have access to our taste consultants who can advise you on menu planning, recipes and flavour pairing.

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Taste games & tricks – a bit of fun

Learning through games and tricks helps you to remember the rules allowing you to be brave enough to test new pairings yourself - coming soon

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Special offers in our taste shop

Keep your eyes peeled for our announcements, we will often post special offers on our fabulous products. Have a look at what we have available now

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The Tasting Room

What is molecular sommelerie?

An understanding of molecular sommelerie reveals how to analyse flavours in each food and drink item, and how to look at the molecules in each product to enable the creation of successful pairings, be it with food, or drink, or a combination of food and drink.  While the word sommellerie historically refers to wine, we use it here to discuss any flavours in food and drink, soft or alcoholic.

Breaking down flavours

All different food and drink types have their own molecular structures, or ingredients, and some of these ingredients come from the same families and some don’t. Finding the original molecules in each flavours will enable you to see molecular families. As a basic rule, flavours from the same families pair well with each other. In addition, some ingredients are seen as bridge ingredients, which enable families to be paired with other families, creating exciting food and drink pairings.

Matching food and drink molecules

We have hundreds of different ingredients and flavours, and an explanation of which molecules will go with each one… sign up to our VIP taste pass to find out more

The Tasting Room

Ask the consultants

Need advice, we are here to help. Sign up to our VIP taste pass and you will have access to our consultants.

We speak French, Italian and English and are happy to help you with ‘short answer’ aroma, flavor and design questions.

Type your ‘short answer’ questions here and one of our consultants will respond when available.

The Tasting Room

Taste games & tricks

Coming soon – we are compiling loads of fun games, and will post these as soon as we can.

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