His Employer Drives Him to Drink

On any given workday, Dal Perio can be found in his office sipping vodka, tequila or perhaps a cocktail.

His employers don’t mind. In fact, they encourage him.

Perio is the “senior sensory scientist” at Heublein Inc., makers of Smirnoff vodka, Jose Cuervo tequila and more than 100 other alcohol products.

His job is to ensure Heublein’s products taste as they should and to help develop new products that people will want to drink.

Through his lips pass a cornucopia of alcohol. He also samples the products of Heublein’s parent, London-based International Distillers & Vinters, whose brands include J&B; Scotch and Baileys Original Irish Cream, and all competitors’ drinks to see how they stack up.

It all adds up to at least two hours a day of tasting.

“A lot of people romanticize about my job,” Perio, 35, said. “But when you turn it into a science, it’s not as romantic. It’s more of a professional job. The idea of me sitting on a lounger sipping martinis all day long--it’s not like that at all.”

It’s more like a chemistry lab, where Perio analyzes, writes reports and runs statistical models on the computer.

In addition to his talent for taste, he has a bachelor’s degree in fermentation science and sensory evaluation from UC Davis.

“When I was out at the local bar at Davis, I really was studying--honest,” Perio said.

He came to Heublein after working for Johnson & Johnson, where he sniffed body lotions and checked for softness in the hair of people using their shampoos and conditioners.

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But alcohol tasting was his real love. He had planned on opening his own vineyard before discovering the sensory science field while at Davis.

Perio now trains volunteers from other departments at Heublein to take part in tasting panels in the sensory sciences lab.

They spend two weeks being taught to look for subtle differences in the taste of a beverage and to use a standard lexicon, so the company will know if a drink is too sweet, too vinegary, too rubbery or too acidic.

“Our goal is to make sure that the product being put out on the market is actually the product that consumers perceive it to be,” Perio said. “You don’t want someone to come in and say, ‘This says raspberry, but it tastes like strawberry.’ ”

The company calls on Perio and the panels whenever they are developing a new product, thinking about changing an ingredient in an existing product or doing quality control on vodka manufactured for the company at 30 locations around the world.

“He can taste anomalies in the parts per million,” said John Jones, Perio’s boss and Heublein’s regulatory management group director.

Perio and his panel once detected a rubbery taste in a batch of vodka made by a licensee in the Philippines. Further detective work by the plant manager determined that some ingredients had been stored in a warehouse next to some old latex.

The tasting lab at Heublein looks like a bizarre cross between a library reading room and a dentist’s office. Perio and his tasters sit in a row of identical sterile white booths, each equipped with a spitting sink. At the front of the booth is a trap door, through which unmarked samples are passed.

Each sample is placed on a white place mat, to ensure the color does not vary from one tester to another.

The testers sniff a sample, taste it, spit it out, clear their palates with water and receive the next sample.

On this day, Smirnoff vodka made in China and New Zealand is being tested against what is known as the “Hartford standard.” Vodka by definition is supposed to be odorless and tasteless. One batch doesn’t seem to measure up, rating sevens and eights against the standard 10. Comments include “buttery” or “cocoa.”

Perio tastes the samples himself, but uses the panel as what amounts to a collective tongue.

“Smirnoff is the standard for vodka worldwide,” he said. “So it’s important that it remain consistent.”

Sometimes, Perio brings people in off the street for a test. They are asked to grade a new product on a scale of one to 10. If it rates above a six, Perio said he knows he has a winner.

But Perio’s tongue has veto power. He is the man called into the product development lab and asked to judge whether a new product line is on the right track.

Despite relying on his senses, Perio said his tongue is not insured.

Perio avoids spending his days in a drunken stupor by spitting out every sample he tastes, but he said that a “negligible” amount of alcohol does get absorbed through the tongue.

“I don’t think it’s enough to prevent me from driving home at the end of the day,” he said.

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Still, his job has its hazards. There is something called taste-bud fatigue. If he sips too much of the same product during the day, he begins to lose the ability to discriminate subtle differences in flavor.

“If I was tasting one thing all the time, I would probably get burned out,” Perio said. “But we have such a wide range of products--from sherry to brandy, to vodka to gin, to mixed drinks, to nonalcoholic drinks--that your burnout rate is a lot lower.”

Perio said he has a liquor cabinet at home that is stocked “with everything.” But he said he does not often drink socially. It’s a job to him. If he does drink out, he drinks just to enjoy the taste, never “the cheap stuff.”

A night out at a restaurant, Perio admits, can be tough on the wine steward.

“I’m the guy that always gets handed the wine list,” he said. “And I’m not afraid to send [wine] back. Whether the wine has been exposed to too much sunlight, or the cork is bad, I can tell.”

Perio said he makes a good salary, but would not say just how much. And he has a dream. He hopes to someday develop a whole new category of distilled products for Heublein. One day, he would like a customer to come into a bar and order a Dal on the rocks.

“It would probably be 100 proof or something higher,” he said.