Glossary · Sensory
Retronasal olfaction
Also written retronasal aroma. Each is a name for the same thing, which is why none of them has an entry of its own.
Definition
Smelling from within the mouth, as volatiles released by warming and chewing pass up behind the palate to the olfactory epithelium. Most of what people call taste is retronasal smell.
- Subject
- Sensory
- Also written
- retronasal aroma
In more detail
The practical consequence is that a cider smelled in the glass and the same cider assessed in the mouth deliver different information, and both are needed. Blocking the nose while tasting removes almost everything except the basic tastes and the tactile sensations, which is the standard demonstration of the point.
Related terms
Terms that belong to the same part of the subject, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Sensory
Orthonasal olfaction
Smelling through the nostrils in the ordinary way, as when the glass is brought to the nose. It samples the headspace above the drink rather than the volatiles released in the mouth.
Sensory
Palate
In tasting usage, the whole in-mouth impression of a drink, and by extension a taster’s trained sensitivity. Anatomically it is the roof of the mouth, which does little of the tasting.
Sensory
Aroma threshold
The lowest concentration at which a compound can be detected in a given medium, usually defined as the level at which half a panel distinguishes it from a blank.
Sensory
Descriptive analysis
A formal sensory method in which a trained panel rates the intensity of each of an agreed set of attributes, producing a quantitative profile that can be analysed statistically.
Where to go next
- Cider glossary — The whole vocabulary, by subject and A–Z.
- Comparisons — Terms that are only really clear when set against the thing they are not.
- Search — Finds terms by their aliases and by their spellings in other languages.
Sources
What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.
Washington State University cider research programme
Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center · university · passage verified 2026-08-24
The single most useful open cider dataset CiderHQ has found. The programme’s cultivar performance database gives juice chemistry, orchard behaviour, bloom and harvest timing and cider-maker tasting notes for 73 cultivars grown at one maritime site over fifteen years, and — unusually — publishes its classification thresholds alongside its figures, so the classification can be checked rather than taken on trust. It also states outright that its results diverge from the English ones. Read in full on 2026-08-24 and transcribed into `data/trials/wsu-mount-vernon.ts`; four published figures were found to be impossible and are withheld there with their reasons.
Peer-reviewed literature on apple phenolics and cider sensory perception
Various journals · peer-reviewed literature · registered as competent for this subject
Registered as a class rather than as one paper, because the mechanisms CiderHQ describes — tannin chain length driving the split between bitterness and astringency, salivary protein precipitation, enzymatic browning — are established across many studies rather than resting on any single one. Individual papers are cited where a specific number is quoted.