A byte to eat: will AI super-tasters disrupt food?

By Barclay Bram

A tea bag is an extraordinary thing. Each small sachet contains a mix of leaves from different producers and different places. Hundreds of factors can affect the flavour of each leaf, from the amount of sunlight and rainfall to the type of soil it was grown in, how it was plucked and how it was dried. Yet when you drink a cup of your favourite brew, you expect it to taste exactly like the last one. How is that possible?

Tetley, a British teamaker, boasts that its basic blend has had the same distinctive taste since the company was set up in 1822. Every day some 45m cups of Tetley tea are drunk across the world. Reproducing that dependable, unvarying flavour is the job of Sebastian Michaelis, a master taster for Tetley. He tastes up to 250 different brews each day, looking for subtle differences.