How Colour Impacts Flavour
What flavour springs to mind when you think of the colour red?
Or how about dark green?
Or even purple?
The chances are you will have vivid connections between such colours and specific flavours. Connections that will be unique to you and no one else. This is because flavour perception is far more than just taste, smell, and mouthfeel alone.
While the mouth and nose are crucial players in the sensory experience of food and drink, vision plays a surprisingly dominant role in shaping how we interpret flavour. Colour, in particular, has a profound influence on how we perceive sweetness, bitterness, acidity, and even texture. From the wine glass to the whisky tumbler, colour primes our expectations and alters our sensory reality in ways both subtle and dramatic. So closely integrated are colours with flavour perception that it would not be unreasonable to even consider colour as a significant component of flavour itself. Let’s take a look.
The Psychology of Colour-Taste Correspondence
The human brain is wired to make associations between sensory inputs. Colour and taste are no exception. Studies using Stroop-like tasks, where participants must match colours to tastes, have shown strong and consistent correspondences between specific hues and flavour perceptions (Spence, 2019).
For example, red and pink are frequently associated with sweetness, while green and yellow evoke sourness. This phenomenon isn't just learned – it appears to be deeply ingrained in human cognition, possibly stemming from evolutionary mechanisms related to fruit ripeness and toxicity detection.
One study demonstrated that even when participants were given identical-tasting solutions, changing the colour influenced their reported taste experience. A red-coloured liquid was perceived as sweeter than an identical clear one, and a green liquid was rated as more sour (Wang et al., 2020).
The Stroop Effect and Colour-Taste Conflicts
The Stroop test has long been used to explore cognitive interference and automatic associations. A Stroop test measures how interference from conflicting information – like reading the word "blue" written in red ink – affects our brain’s ability to process tasks involving attention, perception, and reaction speed.
In a food-related adaptation of this experiment, researchers found that when the expected colour-flavour pairings were incongruent (for instance, a salty taste labelled with the word “sweet” or a blue drink expected to be orange-flavoured), participants took longer to process the information and reported confusion in their flavour perception (Wang & Spence, 2020).
This suggests that our brains rely heavily on visual cues when forming taste expectations, and disrupting this pattern causes cognitive dissonance. In fact, olfactory detection has been shown to be around ten times slower than visual detection (Herz & Engen, 1996).
This effect is particularly relevant in product design, where food and drink brands rely on colour coding to guide consumer perception. A strawberry-flavoured yoghurt presented in a blue container might be perceived as less sweet than one in a red container, even though the formulation remains unchanged. This highlights the potential for colour manipulation in sensory marketing - a fascinating niche that influencers us all, yet commonly operates behind the curtains of conscious thought.
Here’s a great example:
Glenmorangie 12 year old single malt whisky is renowned for its balance of honey and citrus flavours. Should this be any surprise when we look at the branding? It shouts citrus ceilidh louder than Carmen Miranda in a kilt. The distillery name even includes the word ‘orangie’. Now, not for one moment am I suggesting its organoleptic qualities are as a direct result of the packaging, however, it’s a brilliant example of how colour coding can be used to ‘point’ consumers in a desired direction. But while Glenmo’ is the perfect example of how to get it right, other brands have played marketing roulette and bet on the wrong colour.
The great Coca-Cola White Can Debacle of 2011 - proof that even billion-dollar brands can get colour catastrophically wrong.
In an earnest bid to save the polar bears at Christmas time, Coca-Cola swapped out their iconic red can for a limited-edition white one as part of a winter conservation campaign. Noble cause? Absolutely. But the reaction? Pure consumer confusion.
Shoppers took one look at the snowy white can and assumed they’d accidentally grabbed a Diet Coke, or worse — that something was “off”. People started claiming the Coke tasted different, despite being chemically identical. Spoiler alert: it didn’t - but as we have seen, our brains are wired to associate red with sweet and familiar, and without it, flavour perception started playing tricks.
Within weeks, Coca-Cola pulled the frosty makeover and brought back the classic red. Moral of the story? Don’t mess with the red. Especially not at Christmas.
Colour and the Perception of Aromas
While taste is influenced by colour, so too is aroma. This was strikingly demonstrated in Morrot et al.'s classic study on the colour of odours (Morrot, Brochet & Dubourdieu, 2001). In their experiment, white wine was artificially coloured red and presented to a group of trained wine experts. When describing the aromas, participants overwhelmingly used descriptors typically reserved for red wines – such as cherry, blackcurrant, and tobacco – despite the liquid being chemically identical to a standard white wine. This study illustrates how visual information can override even the highly trained olfactory perception of wine professionals.
This effect extends beyond wine. In whisky, for example, darker colours tend to be associated with richer, more mature flavours, even when this is not necessarily the case. If two identical whiskies are presented – one with a golden hue and the other artificially darkened – tasters are more likely to describe the darker sample as having richer, spicier notes. Colour serves as a shortcut for the brain, leading us to anticipate specific flavour profiles before they are actually experienced.
The Psychological Impact of Food Colouring
Food manufacturers have long understood the power of colour in shaping consumer experiences. From the quintessential green of frozen peas to the vibrant orange of a cheese snack, colour influences our assumptions about flavour intensity, quality, and even freshness. Studies have shown that when colours are altered unexpectedly, consumer satisfaction drops – even when the taste remains unchanged (Spence, 2019).
For example, a lemon-flavoured drink that appears blue rather than yellow is often perceived as tasting 'off' or unpleasant, even if the flavour compounds are identical. This is because our brains expect lemon to appear within a specific colour range, and any deviation disrupts the flavour experience. Similarly, dull or faded colours in food are associated with staleness or lack of flavour, which can impact overall enjoyment.
The Role of Colour in Whisky Perception
For whisky lovers, colour is often the first indicator of quality and age. A deep amber hue suggests a long maturation period in sherry casks, while a pale straw colour might indicate a shorter maturation in ex-bourbon barrel ageing. However, this expectation can be misleading. While a whisky’s colour can indicate how active a cask was this does not always translate into flavour and quality. Many a pale coloured single cask whisky has surprised in a delightful way, and equally, many a deep coloured whisky has disappointed.
Distilleries can add caramel colouring (E150a) to create a darker whisky, influencing consumer perception without affecting the actual flavour. However, it raises a poignant question - what is actual flavour? Blind tastings have revealed that when colour cues are removed, drinkers often struggle to match their expectations with the flavour active molecules in the glass (Morrot et al., 2001).
The role of colour in whisky appreciation also extends to glassware and lighting. A whisky served in a dimly lit room may seem richer and more complex than the same dram enjoyed under bright fluorescent lighting. This is due to the way lighting affects colour saturation and contrast, subtly altering our interpretation of depth and character in the liquid. Hence, we arrive at another interesting question - should colour be considered a part of flavour?
Is Colour a Component of Flavour?
Broadly speaking, we consider flavour as being cognitive perception derived from the sensations of smell, taste, and mouthfeel. Other sensory inputs such as hearing, external touch, and vision are regarded as influencing factors on flavour, rather than being direct components of flavour itself. However, is this viewpoint worth reconsidering?
Flavour itself is a synthetic perception, meaning that it’s created in the brain from the stimulation of numerous sensory inputs – rather than analytic perception such as taste. In essence, flavour is greater than the sum of its parts. Each component part is therefore an influencing factor. To take a more literal perspective, odours can influence the perception of tastes.
A notable study by Sakai et al. (2001) demonstrated that the presence of a vanilla odour can enhance the perceived sweetness of aspartame solutions. This effect was observed when the vanilla scent was introduced either orthonasally (through the nose) or retronasally (through the mouth), indicating that olfactory cues alone, without direct interaction with taste receptors, can influence sweetness perception.
The parallels between the influencing effects of odours and colours on taste are strikingly clear. Hence it would not be unreasonable to suggest that colour is of equal importance to flavour as odour. We naturally separate the two because while vision is external, concrete perception – flavour is internal, abstract perception. But colour has an undeniably significant role to play in flavour perception.
A Trick of the Mind
No one wants to be made a fool of. So when it comes to flavour, especially in this post-craft era where authenticity reins, we like to feel the flavour experience is genuine, pure, and unadulterated. Hence, artificially coloured products are often viewed with suspicion or low regard.
Understanding that colours influence overall flavour in a similar way to how smells, tastes, and mouthfeel fool our minds, surely any chemical manipulation of flavour is tricking us in some way. With the example of vanilla making solutions appear sweeter, our brains are being duped through the influence of oak maturation on tipples such as whisky, rum, and wine.
We clearly embrace colours such as the plummy hue of a merlot, or the deep mahogany of a sherry cask whisky, yet grape skin maceration and cask maturation could be considered artificial interactions i.e. they are deliberate human interventions. While we like to feel we are cognitively immune to any such visual trickery when it comes to ‘actual’ flavour, we are far from it. As you will no doubt now realise, colour is an integral part of flavour and should be treated as such.
The Future of Colour-Flavour Research
As research into cross-modal sensory perception continues, the potential applications of colour manipulation in food and drink experiences are expanding. Augmented reality dining, for example, is already experimenting with using coloured lighting to enhance or alter flavour perception. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence is being explored as a tool to predict how consumers might react to specific colour-flavour pairings before a product even reaches the market (Spence, 2019).
For the drinks industry, this opens exciting possibilities. Imagine a whisky bar where ai glasses (of the type that straddle the eyes) change their lens colour throughout the duration of sipping a cocktail, dram, or glass of wine. Or how about interactive glassware that can make a drink appear darker or lighter in synchronisation with music. Certainly the intersection of psychology, neuroscience, and sensory science is shaping the future of how we experience flavour in ways we are only beginning to understand.
Conclusion
Colour is one of the most powerful yet often overlooked factors in flavour perception. Whether it’s the expectation of sweetness from a red drink, the assumption of maturity from a dark whisky, or the altered perception of aroma from white wine coloured red, our visual system profoundly shapes our sensory world. For professionals in the food and drink industry, recognising the impact of colour is essential – not just for developing products but for refining the way we taste and defining the way we train our palates.
Ultimately, while taste and smell are fundamental to flavour, our eyes play a crucial role in the experience. By understanding and harnessing the power of colour, we can take flavour appreciation to an entirely new level. Want to know more? Get in touch here to see how we can empower your production team or customer facing team with progressive sensory science insights such as these. Or if you simply want to stay up to date, join our newsletter here.