BlankBottle Orbitofrontal Cortex 2024
Learn More About This Wine
A white blend according to Pieter’s conscious mind, named after the scientific name for the part of your brain where conscious decisions are made – Inspired by LIMBIC 2015 (a wine from his subconscious). 12 Varietals from 17 sites all over the Western Cape.
In October 2015 Pieter was sitting on a plane heading to Johannesburg, next to a guy who was (or so it seemed) plugged into his computer with wires and stuff. It looked like he was communicating with the machine in a way. When they landed he asked him what on earth he was doing. He told Pieter that he and his clinical psychologist business partner had started a marketing company called Neural Sense, based in Cape Town.
They conduct market research by tapping into people’s subconscious reactions to various inputs. Pietere loves weird things, so he told him he makes wine and if ever he wanted to do something with wine he was welcome to get in contact. And he did. Three months later, he was sitting at the table in his winery hooked onto machines. All his subconscious reactions (in the LIMBIC part of his brain) to each of the 21 components were to be measured and recorded – a camera looking him in the eyes (for eye reactions), a heart rate monitor on his chest, something on his arm (for arousal levels e.g. heat/sweat) and a mobile EEG device on his head (for monitoring his brain waves).
It was the time of year where he had to make up final blends and he was sitting with 21 different white wine components in the barrel, which were ready for blending and bottling. They were all different varieties from different areas and vineyards. So his assistant winemaker, Julia, took samples from all the barrels and put them into glasses, which were marked from 1 to 21. For each wine he would first close his eyes, then open them and they would start recording with the camera, hand him any wine and prompt him to nose, taste and spit – constantly monitoring and recording his heart rate, blood stuff and activity in his subconscious.
Of course, he can’t control his subconscious – before he thinks of reacting, he already has. He tasted through all 21 wines. He obviously spat, washed his mouth with water in between and he even did a few with clean water in his mouth and used that as a control or base reaction. This process took a whole day. Their job was now to analyse the data. The way he understands it is that they look at all the parts of his brain that reacted, compare it with all the other blood and heart monitors and then work out with mathematical algorithms what he liked and disliked.
The analysis of the data took months, so in the meantime Julia and he decided to blend a control – the best possible white blend from the same 21 parcels – making use of the conscious mind; the ORBITOFRONTAL CORTEX. When the results came, the two wines were so different! They blended both and bottled the 2 wines. BlankBottle was not trying to prove anything with this experiment, they were just trying to have fun.
Tim Atkin’s MW – South Africa Report 2025 – 95 points
“No rules” is how Pieter Walser describes this brilliant 12-variety, 18-vineyard Western Cape blend dominated by Clairette Blance and Verdelho. More than the sum of its considerable parts, it’s poised, textured and refreshing, with some subtle skin tannins, alluring patisserie and wildflower aromas, flavours of lime, orange peel and yellow apple and a mineral core.
