Delicious is not a description. Two people taste the same steak. One thinks it is wonderful; the other would rather have a different cut on the plate. Both say “juicy”, yet they may mean something entirely different by it. I have been having conversations like this for years. In training sessions, at tastings and in exchanges with colleagues from other countries. There is nothing wrong with that in itself. Taste is personal. But as soon as we talk professionally about meat, we need to be more precise. What do I perceive? What do I like about it? What is my recommendation to the customer based on? A pronounced ageing flavour may be accurately described from a professional standpoint and still not appeal to me. My personal taste does not make it a flaw. These questions also accompanied me as I built Sensory-ID. Yesterday, I presented the platform publicly. Over the summer, I worked on it intensively, developing functions, testing them and revising them again. Much of it emerged from situations I know from my work. A cut has a different name abroad. A tasting produces interesting impressions that can hardly be retraced later. A recommendation for core temperature leaves open which meat and cooking process it is actually intended for. Sensory-ID is my response to this: a digital working, knowledge and education platform for professional meat expertise. There, I can look things up, compare products, document tastings and evaluate results. A perception becomes a description that I can refer back to later and discuss with others. Having my own benchmark is especially important to me. Anyone who assesses meat regularly should occasionally taste the same sample again under a different code. That is where it gets interesting. Do I recognise it? Does my judgement remain similar? Can I explain why I assessed it differently this time? Even within a ribeye or striploin, it is worth comparing different positions. After all, the name on the label does not tell the whole story about the piece on the plate. This is precisely where the International Meat Sensory Program comes in, launching in Germany and Austria in March 2027. Over eight months of training, perception, comparison and professional reasoning are revisited time and again. For me, this is the next step for meat sommeliers: sharpening their own perspective and being able to apply what they have learned confidently in their business. Sensory-ID supports this journey digitally. The International Meat Leadership Network is intended to facilitate exchange and continued development beyond graduation. After all these months of work, I am now looking forward to the people who will work with it. To their questions, their experiences and also to the points where they look more closely than I do. A platform for meat expertise has to prove itself in practice. Of course, we may still simply enjoy the next good steak. But when we recommend it to others, we should be able to say why. Ronny Paulusch Discover Sensory-ID: https://www.sensory-id.com International Meat Sensory Program: https://imsp.pro International Meat Leadership Network: https://imln.org
