Sandisiwe Mbhele

By Sandisiwe Mbhele

UX Content Writer


Wine is now being paired with music instead of food with specific tracks available on Spotify

Usually paired with food, this wine and music pairing is set to change the experience of drinking wine.


The word innovative gets thrown a lot these days however this collaboration between Nedbank and winemakers is pure synergy. 

Wine is usually associated with food pairings, menu courses pair well with cabernets, pinot noir’s and rose’s but Cape Winemakers are thinking different simply through wine elevated with music. 

Nedbank and the Cape Winemakers Guild have called their collaboration the ‘world’s first’ featuring protégés, composers, and neuroscientists to create a piece of music that pairs with any glass of Cabernet Sauvignon. 

Melodic sounds enhance your enjoyment

During the media launch this week, it was revealed how the innovation was created and how the melodic sounds enhance your enjoyment of a cabernet sauvignon. 

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They wanted to change and make the experience of drinking wine “more exciting and accessible.”

Khensani Nobanda, Nedbank group executive for marketing and corporate affairs said they really had a big task on their hands by using music notes to enhance the tastes of wine notes. 

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They first utilised technology to accomplish this.

Using wearable electroencephalogram (EEG) headsets, the wine proteges from Cape Winemakers Guild took part in the experiment. 

The EEG headsets were placed around their heads to measure emotional responses of how they feel to a specific glass of wine.

Some of the wine tastings were done blindfolded, measuring the first nose of the wine to the final sip. 

Following this was the making of the music.

Composers Nic van Reenen and Simon Kohler had to take the protege’s personal experiences of the flavour of the wine into account.

The artists would lightly beat the wine barrels to correlate with certain flavour profiles such as sweet, salty and sour. 

The composers paid attention to every detail, to the sound frequency reverberating for certain wine glasses, the opening of wine bottles to the pouring of the glass. 

Because a cabernet sauvignon is often described as a full-bodied wine they were happy with the final product, and the song was then played to the public for the first time. 

Listening to The Tasting Notes: A Story of Sound and Wine track available on Spotify and Youtube, the music is hypnotic, refined hearing different notes and beats each listen, correlating so well with a glass of cabernet sauvignon. 

Both the winemakers and Nedbank hope people will get an enhanced experience with this wine and music pairing. For the instructional video, click here to watch.

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