Can lunar cycles affect the taste of wine?

bbc ^ | 20 April 2009

[JoeProBono]

Supermarkets are arranging wine tasting sessions around "good" and "bad" days as dictated by the lunar calendar. So does the Moon really change the taste of wine? A German great-grandmother called Maria Thun is wielding huge influence on the British wine industry. A calendar she first published in the 1950s categorises days as "fruit", "flower", "leaf" or "root", according to the Moon and stars. Wine is best on fruit days, followed by flower, leaf and root days. The worst day is marked as "unfavourable" in the calendar. (See factbox below for forthcoming "good" and "bad" days). Tesco and Marks & Spencer are the latest supporters of her philosophy. The two supermarkets have revealed that they have a policy of inviting critics to taste their wine only on days which the calendar says are favourable. Her theory is that wine is a living organism that responds to the Moon's rhythms in the same way that some people believe humans do. The so-called "lunar effect" has been widely dismissed as pseudo-science but its followers think that as the Moon exerts such a huge impact on the tides, it must follow that it affects the water in the human body and therefore human behaviour.

[wildbill]

My Thunderbird always tastes the same to me although I will say that it sometimes has me howling at the moon.

But taste? Sheesh, I don’t believe this article.