In news that your school maths teacher definitely would not want to hear, science has confirmed what we all knew already - drinking wine is actually engaging our brain far more than solving algebra.
In fact, the new research claims that sipping on vino actually engages more parts of our brain than any other human behaviour.
Including listening to music or solving tricky sums (best leave those tax returns alone then).
Dr Gordon Shepherd, from the Yale School of Medicine, (who is our new hero) goes so far as to say that it is the ideal “work out” for our brain.
Which perfectly explains why our grey matter aches so much the morning after the night before (definitely nothing to do with a hangover).
In his new book, ‘Neuroenology: How The Brain Creates The Taste Of Wine’ Shepherd claims that sniffing and analysing a wine before drinking it requires “exquisite control of one of the biggest muscles in the body.”
Shepherd has spent years studying how the human brain processes flavour and says his research shows taste is a lot more subjective than previously thought.
“The taste is not in the wine, the taste is created by the brain of the wine taster,” he said.
The factors that influence our perception of taste are things like our memories, emotions of those and our friends around us, age, gender and even saliva type.
When the drinker swirls the liquid around their mouth, the tongue’s intricate muscles are put to work along with thousands of taste and odour receptors.
Unfortunately though, Shepherd did caution people against overdoing it: “If you take too large a sip, you’ve saturated your system.”
We might need to revise our weekend plans then.