Live Jazz Lifts Wine Ratings in Italian Tastings

Listening to live music while tasting wine can make the drink more enjoyable, even when the music is slow or melancholy, according to a study by researchers at the University of Pisa and Italy’s National Research Council that examined public tastings in Tuscany and Friuli Venezia Giulia.

The study, published in the journal Foods, found that wine ratings rose when participants heard live jazz during tastings compared with silent conditions. The effect was strongest when the music was upbeat and motivational, but even relaxing or nostalgic music tended to improve how people judged the wines. The researchers said the findings suggest that sound shapes wine perception through emotion and expectation, not by changing the wine itself.

The work was based on five public tasting events held as part of a series called “5 Wednesdays of Emotions.” At each event, attendees sampled four wines, including one reference wine served at all five sessions. The tastings were blind, and participants filled out online questionnaires rating both their overall liking of each wine and their emotional response. A jazz trio performed live at each event, with two instrumental pieces selected for each wine: one melancholic or relaxing, the other upbeat or motivational.

The researchers analyzed responses from roughly 45 to 50 attendees at each session. Because only a small number of people returned for more than one event, the team treated each tasting as largely independent. They used ordinal statistical models to account for the fact that participants rated wines on a scale rather than giving precise numerical measurements.

Across the full dataset, music had a clear effect on hedonic ratings. Both types of music produced significantly higher scores than silence, with upbeat music showing the larger gain. The study also found substantial differences among individual tasters, meaning that not everyone responded in the same way. About 70% of cases fell into a pattern in which both songs improved the wine experience, while smaller groups showed mixed or negative responses.

The authors said positive surprise was one of the strongest emotional factors linked to higher liking scores. In their analysis, people who reported more positive surprise also tended to give wines better ratings. Negative emotions were present but less prominent overall. The researchers said this supports a crossmodal explanation in which music changes how wine is experienced by altering mood, attention and expectations during tasting.

The wines used in the study came from commercial producers in Italy and included reds, whites, rosés and sparkling wines from regions including Tuscany and Friuli Venezia Giulia. The team measured chemical characteristics such as alcohol content, acidity, sugar levels and color, but said the study was not designed to connect specific wine chemistry with liking scores.

One complication was tasting order. The sessions were arranged “in crescendo,” with lighter wines served before more structured ones. That meant presentation order was tied to wine identity in much of the dataset. The researchers tested whether order alone explained the results and found no strong evidence that it did for the reference wine served across all sessions. Still, they said order could not be fully separated from wine type in every case.

The study adds to a growing body of research showing that multisensory cues can shape how food and drink are perceived. Previous work has shown that music can influence sweetness perception and overall enjoyment in other settings. The new findings suggest that live performance may have an especially strong effect because it creates a shared atmosphere around tasting.

The authors said their results have implications for wineries, restaurants and hospitality venues looking to design tasting experiences that go beyond flavor alone. They also noted limits in the study, including a relatively small number of repeat participants and limited information about some of the wines’ sensory profiles.