Tim Hanni's mother-in-law is highly educated, is well-to-do, and appears to be the ideal wine consumer. But she doesn't drink wine in restaurants -- only iced tea.

However, she does drink wine at home. She likes white zinfandel. It's just that she won't order it when she eats out. Some restaurants offer what they call sweet wines -- rieslings perhaps, with a little residual sugar, and maybe a dessert wine or two -- but no white zin. White zin is looked down upon by many people who work in restaurants (and even in the wine industry), and some openly scoff when it's ordered. But millions of people drink it.

Therein lies the biggest problem with the wine industry today, Hanni said. "The industry doesn't understand that people are biologically different. That's like a shoe salesman thinking that all people have the same size feet."

Hanni, a Napa-based wine entrepreneur and educator and one of only half a dozen Masters of Wine in the Napa Valley, said that many people just like sweet wine. "If you look at the amount of sweet wine consumed over history, versus dry wine, dry (wine) doesn't even show up on the radar," he said.

Hanni isn't necessarily a big white zin fan -- it's just that he's discovered that a large percentage of people like to drink it, along with other sweet wines, as part of his exploration into why people taste in the way they do.

Categories of tasters

Just as people have fingerprints that are different, their tastes are different, he said. People can fall into three different categories of tasters: Hypersensitive, who can have up to 10,000 taste buds, mid-line and less sensitive.

"The hypers live in an incredibly sensitive world and many of them have the volume on everything turned up," he said. "Stereos are louder to many of them. They can taste and smell a wider range of things, and that's not necessarily a good thing."

The mid-level group has a wide perception of tolerances, and are most open to different things.

The less sensitive group, or "non-tasters," as he called them, have fewer than 1,000 taste buds, and it may be as low as 500. "They need the volume turned up in flavor."

These conclusions are not necessarily exact. "Although Super-sensitives tend to be more sensitive to most things, and less-sensitives tend to be less sensitive, there are exceptions," he said.

Beverage training

This knowledge came about after he started a company called WineQuest in 1999 to work with the hospitality industry -- restaurants and hotels -- in developing beverage training programs for wine personnel, and then opened his own firm, the Hanni Company, early this year.

While putting programs together for clients, he began to explore the matter of taste and how it affects wine.

For example, sweetness in food will amplify the negative aspects of wine -- "It's the same phenomenon as brushing your teeth and then drinking orange juice," he said. "Trying to prepare duck with cherry sauce to go with pinot noir will often result in an unpleasant experience that the chef or sommelier are oblivious to."

Hanni asked a reporter to taste a red wine, then eat a red seedless grape, then try another sip of wine. The wine not only didn't taste the same, it took on a bitter flavor.

"A non-taster probably would not get a reaction to the grape and wine," he said.

Some foods that are thought to be enemies of wine can actually be wine-friendly under the right circumstances, he said.

To further demonstrate his point, Hanni put some salt on a lemon, then asked the reporter to taste the lemon, making sure the lemony taste was on his tongue. A sip of the wine followed, and the lemon seemed to smooth out the tannins, making it, in Hanni's words, "more fruity, in a way intended by the winemaker."

Preparing food to pair

How food is prepared can make a difference in how it pairs with wine.

Hanni took a piece of chuck steak, cut it in half, sprinkled some plain table salt on one half, put a special seasoning he created on the other, then sauteed it. The seasoning, he said, was balanced with various elements, and when tasted, the meat with the special seasoning definitely tasted better when eaten with the wine.

Still another example was asparagus, termed by Hanni as one of the worst enemies of wine. He took stalks, cut them into bite-sized pieces and sauteed them as is. He sprinkled other pieces from the same bunch with some fresh lemon juice, salt, pepper and vinegar, all of which also could be termed wine enemies, then sauteed them. Upon tasting both preparations, there was no question about it -- the latter went perfectly with the wine.

(The wine, by the way, was a good one -- a 2003 Robert Foley claret, with an alcohol level of 14 percent.)

"This totally wipes out the concept of food and wine pairing," Hanni said. But he was quick to add, "This doesn't mean that you should stop pairing food and wine. We (the food and wine industries) need to understand the differences and go to the table together, exploring different ideas" to make the food even more compatible with wine.

Hanni said chefs who have worked with him on his program "have made changes in their cooking. If food is balanced correctly, the food will be more delicious. That's why chefs buy into it."

Senses depend on memory

Humans experience the world through their five senses, and the sensory input relates to previous experience and memory. "Three people can experience the same smell, but for one it can elicit anger, one can get joy and one can feel fear," Hanni said. "It's all based on past experience."

He related a story of someone who didn't like oatmeal. The individual traced the dislike to an incident that occurred at the breakfast table in which his mother slapped him while he was eating oatmeal.

Tastes are acquired in much the same way. "When the initial instinctive response to a stimulus is positive, over time it is channeled to the brain, and your brain tells you, 'This is good,'" he said.

The brain adapts over time, and where a sensation registers in the brain can be influenced by words and values, and thereby taught, and that's how you acquire a taste, he said. "A person can try a combination of wine and food, find it very unpleasant, but then be told that it's (the pairing) incorrect, or exquisite or delicious, and the next sensory experience (with the same combination) may go to the brain and literally change your entire experience."

Setting sensory boundaries

"Your sensory anatomies set your boundaries," he said. "Hyper-sensitive people are likely not to like Scotch (whisky)." But he said research shows that hyper-sensitives tend to like white zinfandel.

On the other hand, "non-tasters like the bombs," he said, referring to the heavy wines known among aficionados as "fruit bombs." "They need the volume turned up."

On the subject of descriptors, Hanni is not a fan and calls many of them "eno-babble." "There's a breakdown in the fundamental words, like flavor versus taste. Sometimes there are very specific flavors that are used as descriptors," he said. But the worst thing, he added, "is how judgmental language is, like 'too oaky' or 'too tannic.' It would be easy to change it from 'too' to 'very.' That can communicate better.

"The only descriptors you should worry about are 'yum' and 'yuk.'"

Umami -- a primary taste

During the interview Hanni referred several times to "umami," which he described as "a primary taste that provides a richness of flavor -- in some cases savory or in some cases ripe -- and it's the single most prevalent taste in food.

Umami has been called the fifth taste -- the others being salty, sweet, sour and bitter. It was discovered by a Japanese scientist, and according to the Umami Information Center Web site, "umami is a savory taste imparted by glutamate and ribonucleotides, including inosinate and guanylate, which occur naturally in many foods including meat, fish, vegetables and dairy products. The taste of umami itself is subtle. It blends well with other tastes to expand and round out flavors. Most people don't recognize umami when they encounter it, but it can be detected when eating ripe tomatoes, parmesan cheese, cured ham, mushrooms, meat and fish. Umami plays an important role making food taste delicious."

Hanni said that when there's considerable sweetness and umami taste in food, it will exaggerate the bitterness, tannin and acidity in wine and will suppress the sweetness and umami in wine. It will taste thinner and have less of a natural taste.

Another Web site, worldwidewords.org, said taste is complicated, "… the taste buds being helped along by sense of smell, by the feel of substances in the mouth and even by the noise that food makes when we chew it." And of umami, the site said, "It's sometimes associated with a feeling of perfect quality in a taste, or of some special emotional circumstance in which a taste is experienced. It is also said to involve all the senses, not just that of taste."

All of which means that attraction or repulsion to primary flavors, interactions and memories that are evoked all are factors that go into determining which wine goes with which food.

Trained as chef

Hanni comes to his current occupation naturally -- he trained and worked as a professional chef before getting into the wine business. He went to work in a wine store in Atlanta -- Happy Herman's -- and was a Francophile, concentrating on French wines. But as he became more familiar with California wines, he also made some friends from Napa Valley, namely Myron Nightingale, Ed Sbragia and Tor Kenward from Beringer Vineyards. Kenward suggested that Hanni come to Beringer, "but it took me six years to convince myself," he said.

He arrived in California in 1988, and spent the next 11 years at Beringer, working as director of communications for the winery's portfolio and helped establish the Madeline Kamman School for American Chefs at Beringer.

In 1990 he was awarded the Master of Wine title. He had taken the exam a year earlier, failed it so miserably that the director of the institute later told him he thought that "it would not be worthwhile to take the test again." Hanni realized he knew about wine, but most of the exam was essay style and he acknowledged he just didn't know how to organize his thoughts. He enrolled in a three-day class called "Clear Writing and Communication" but when he arrived there on the first day of class, he discovered that it was a technical writing class for engineers.

He took it anyway, and found that as a result of the class, he not only could organize his thoughts, but also realized how important words were, that it was vital to clearly define words and relate those words to the consumer on how the product works. He passed the Master of Wine exam with flying colors the next time.

Lack of communication?

He feels strongly that the wine industry often fails to understand and communicate with consumers. "We need to find new ways for people outside (the industry) to tell us what they like, and then build on that," he said. "We need to make it more inclusive for everyone, so people like my mother-in-law feels welcome."

Although he holds one of the most prestigious titles in the wine world and is actively working in the industry, Hanni doesn't drink. At least now. He's a recovering alcoholic and is looking forward to his "13th birthday," as he called the milestone of his being sober.

"I started drinking at a very young age," he said. "My father was into wine, and I went straight into drinking red Burgundies. I picked up the language. I never had much of a penchant for reading -- I was one of those kids who always had 'needs to improve' on my report card. But I remembered taste experiences and food and wine trivia."

His said the first "serious" job he applied for was as a wine salesman, but "they pointed out that I was three years too young to drink. That's when I turned toward becoming a chef."

In addition to his consulting business, Hanni will teach some upcoming professional development programs at Copia, is starting a company to market the food seasoning product he created, is writing a book titled "Why You Like What You Like" and plans to create a winery business simulation game. "It's like 'Sim City,' but with wine," he said. "You have to make all the decisions that go into starting a winery."

A musician, too

With all that going on, he also plays guitar in a band. In 1989 he teamed with Bob Foley and Bob Janis to create a band, and through Foley was introduced to the woman who became his wife, Kate, known around Napa Valley as a real estate broker. She's also known as Kate Moon, an accomplished singer and songwriter.

The Hannis, along with four friends, currently have a band, the Toasted Heads, which plays R&B, Motown, jazz, funk and rock 'n roll.

But that's not the only type of music they like. The couple are on the Napa Valley Symphony board and chair the 2007 Symphony Auction Gala.

Although he's not consumed with thoughts of white zinfandel, Hanni seems to keep coming back to the wine in conversations. Once he was in a restaurant and asked for white zin to go with his steak, but the waiter insisted that a heavier wine would go better. He insisted on the white zin, and when it came, he took a friend's cabernet sauvignon and poured some into the white zin.

The cab floated on top. "Now, which one is heavier?" he asked the waiter.

Hanni offers this advice to valley residents dining out or visiting local tasting rooms: "When you can, ask for white zin with your dinner and see how the (hospitality) industry can be with consumers. Sometimes they'll be condescending, sometimes polite and sometimes they'll make you want to puke."

On the Web: www.hannico.com