IN 1927 MAN COULD RECOGNIZE 10.000 DIFFERENT SMELLS WHILE TODAY THE STUDY BY PROFESSOR LESLIE VOSSHALL, ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK COUNTS A THOUSAND BILLION...

In 1927, the study by two American chemists, sustained that man was able to recognize a range of 10.000 smells. Actually, they only classified 6.561, which were then arbitrarily rounded out to 10.000. After several decades, Professor Leslie Vosshall, who researches the secrets of smell at the Rockefeller University in New York and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, has come out with a new study and new elements on the subject.
“Objectively speaking, everyone should have realized that 10.000 was a wrong number”, he told the U.S. magazine "Wine Spectator" (www.winespectator.com).
“Besides”, continued the professor, “no one has ever tested the olfactory capacity as they have with sight or sound. We know the exact range of audible sound waves perceptible to man, not because someone has actually heard them all, but because it has been proven”. So, which number is correct? According to the Vosshall research group, man can recognize a trillion, or a thousand billion different smells.

This is truly an impressive number, which the researchers reached through quite a complex experiment. They started with 128 aromatic molecules that were mixed in groups of 10, 20 or 30, and asked 26 volunteers to recognize the aromas, for a total of 264 comparisons. The final trillion is simply the result of all the possible mixes with 128 molecules. It is a very interesting theory, especially for the wine world, since 90% of what we taste lies in the aromatic bouquet.