Your Palate

The thing that is truly amazing about wine is the fact that not only is each wine unique, but that the same exact wine will taste different to different people.  Your palate is what allows you to taste a wine for all that its worth, and your palate will give you an idea of the distinct flavors and most importantly, will tell whether or not you like what you’re trying.  The best thing about your palate is that it’s yours.  Another cool thing about your palate is that it’s different from everyone else’s.  So, continuing on one of the central themes for this blog, no one can tell you what you should taste in a wine and no one can tell you that you should like a wine.  Anytime a wine professional writes a review of a wine, they are writing it based on their own tastes.  Robert Parker’s palate is quite different from mine- does that mean that I don’t listen to his recommendations?  Nope, I still read them, but instead of allowing them to tell me how to taste a wine and what I should get out of it, I use them as a jumping off point.

Let me explain.  Say a Cabernet Sauvignon is described as being very fruity, especially heavy on blackberries, and heavy on tannin.  Knowing this, I’ll taste the wine and see what I think about the wine.  Chances are that I’ll pick up on the tannin quickly as my mouth will dry up if it is heavy on tannin, but the flavors might not hit me as easily.  If I’m looking for a particular flavor, like blackberries in this case, I’ll probably be able to pick it up somewhere along the line, but it may not be the first or dominant flavor in my opinion.  I could taste pepper, anise, or any of hundreds of other possibilities instead of blackberries.  So, instead of letting the description that I probably don’t agree with bring me down, and instead of me letting it call me wrong, I just brush it aside and use chalk it up to an example of what someone else thought about this wine.

Now, while each palate is different, they all have some similarities.  The most important similarity that all palates have is that they retain information and they learn with practice.  You might not agree with me here, but it’s a fact.  Want an example?  Have you ever tasted leather?  How about cumin by itself?  Cardboard?  Probably now. Well, I’ve heard all of these used as examples to describe how a wine tastes.  How did we come to associate some of these off the wall flavors with wine?  By tasting.  Once you taste a wine and have someone describe it as leathery or as tasting like cardboard that association sticks in your head (assuming you agree with it) and that experience will be there should you ever have something like it again.  A palate might not improve all that much, but it will get better at discerning flavors with practice.

Next time you try wine, try it with the attitude that you are tasting it with your palate.  Don’t let anyone else’s opinion sway you.  They were tasting with their palate, and chances are that their tasting experience will be different than yours.  That’s the beauty of having your very own palate, and that’s the beauty of wine.  It tastes different to every person that tries it.