Flavour is a mixture of sensory information - taste, smell and the tactile sensation that is known as "mouthfeel" (so you might experience water as feeling "light" or "heavy" in the mouth).
The overriding impression I carried away from my Hawthorne visit was that, although it all comes back to taste at PepsiCo, the physical sensation of tasting has been so thoroughly mediated by advertising and packaging that no one knows anymore where the physiological experience ends and the aspirational experience begins.
When the marbles reached London they were an artistic sensation, justifying Elgin's claim that they would alter the taste and sensibilities of the whole of northern Europe.