Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who said anything about having to use drugs to acquire a taste?
Are there any acquired tastes that don't require some form of drug usage (alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, etc.)?
Organ meats
How to get the wine you really want
121–130 of 164 posts
Re: How to get the wine you really want
#122I have developed a new theory about wine and selecting bottles you/I like. The theory is that pallets for wine develop over time as you drink more, similar to how beer will change. When I was 16, all beer tasted terrible. Then at 19 we 'upgraded' to bud light. Now 15 years later I drink for taste and I like IPAs,or other non standard pilsner. For me, I'm a beginner wine drinker so I do not want the complexity of fanc…
There are also physiological changes that affect this and perception of anything (and our other senses affect taste).
So really, you can just reduce it down to your age.
Re: How to get the wine you really want
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There are plenty of sommelier competitions where they tell apart years and zones very precisely. There's a documentary called Somm that follows a few people as they prepare for the Master Sommelier exam, it's impressive how precisely they can determine the year and region of a wine. Example tasting from the doc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKNmcCCE15E
The followup doco is even better - the newly minted master sommeliers proceed to contradict each other, and seem to have a lot more fun than the first one.
i like the 2nd one also. in the first one they were basically college kids, like gradschool aged, in the 2nd one they are adult professionals, very close to 30 if not over. good perspective on growth. and they all have very different opinions on things which is nice. surprisingly, none of them are snobby, just very knowledgeable.
Re: How to get the wine you really want
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
He's not talking about mixing styles, he's saying preference within style doesn't correlate with price, and I absolutely believe that holds with whiskey ( cough whistle pig cough ). The difference between wine and whiskey is how few options you get within a style in whiskey tasting compared to wine. The options are small enough in whiskey that an amateur on a budget can memorize all of the flavor profiles relatively…
Oh: strong agree, especially for American whiskey, where there's an extremely drinkable "well whiskey" price range, and an extremely memorable and excellent "boutique" price range (taken up mostly by Buffalo antiques), and virtually nothing worth paying for in the middle, where everyone shops. (What's worse is that a lot of brands want to claim a price in the boutique price range --- like WhistlePig --- and so you re…
> virtually nothing worth paying for in the middle
I presume you know this, but an awful lot of those craft brands in the middle (including some of the Whistle Pig line) are made by the same distillery in Indiana. Which doesn't mean that they are bad, but it does disincline one to trust any of the puffery one reads on a label: http://www.seriouseats.com/2015/09/best-whiskey-spirits-from...
I did happen across one brand recently that surprised me by having a genuinely authentic and interesting story. They are doing a sweet potato base blended with their rye cover crop: http://www.outsideonline.com/2040581/drink-your-sweet-potato...
Re: How to get the wine you really want
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who said anything about having to use drugs to acquire a taste?
Are there any acquired tastes that don't require some form of drug usage (alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, etc.)?
Lots of people don't naturally like: avocados, olives, kombucha, stinky cheeses, offal, sushi, etc.
Even with coffee and tea, the acquisition works just as well if you drink decaf. (I only have one cup of caffeinated beverage a day, but I still occasionally enjoy a cup of decaf in the afternoons.)
Re: How to get the wine you really want
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Nobody in the world is going to confuse Laphroiag with Glenlivet Of course not. That's not what I'm saying. All I'm saying is that when I do blind tastings, sometimes the cheap stuff turns out to be my favorite, other times not. (And when it does, I'm happy!) > vodka is a neutral spirit --- it's not supposed to be distinctive And yet it is. If you don't believe me, try comparing Ciroc to Smirnov. You don't even hav…
to be fair vodka isn't meant to have different tastes. it's meant to taste as much like hand sanitizer as possible.
Yeah, the vodka situation has gone out of control.
Traditional Polish test of vodka quality: did it have any flavor? Did you go blind? Do you have a horrible hangover? If all three answers are no, 100/100.
Re: How to get the wine you really want
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, except that blending is a big part of what a winemaker does and, basically, it should be left to professionals. All else is monkeys and typewriters. If you can't tell the diff between a Barefoot and a Silver Oak, what do you think home blending is going to accomplish? Wine snobbery may be bullshit, just like jazz snobbery. But that's not the same as 'appreciation,' which requires some education and experience,…
> But that's not the same as 'appreciation,' which requires some education and experience, maybe even some aptitude. OP's point is that without the information about the price and make of the wine, your brain alone can't "appreciate" anything not matter how educated and experienced you are. If someone tells you you are drinking a rare extremely expensive french 100-year-old vintage, your brain will "appreciate" it, e…
Not a biggie, but thus the "doing it wrong" bit. Sure, everyone can like can what they like, but it's inaccurate to equate discernment with snobbery--except in snobs who, themselves, are doing it wrong. Cheers, as I grab a jug of Paisano to take to the patio while I grill burgers. The 2010 Silver Oak cab continues to collect dust and cat hair on the wine rack. Thus the downside of good wine: afraid to drink it.
Re: How to get the wine you really want
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
> IMHO any wine that needs to "open up" is not as good as one that doesn't. Yikes. Gonna have to disagree with you on that. The effect of a wine being aerated/oxidized after being opened and/or decanted is obvious even to a casual wine drinker. > I now know plenty of wines that reliably taste great (to me) straight out of the gate and keep tasting great through the whole bottle even if I keep it for a couple of days…
I didn't make myself clear. I don't deny that decanting and/or aerating will improve many (perhaps even most) reds. But in my experience, for my own personal tastes, any wine that requires this very rarely ends up tasting as good as one that doesn't. > Reading those two comments of yours makes me seriously doubt your ability to make observations that generalize to other people. Two responses: 1. What I've said here i…
I'm not sure blind tastings with relative newbies gives the best signal here. If you give someone cocktails for the first time they'll probably like screwdrivers the most; if you let kids choose between doritos and oysters they'll pick the doritos.
After having had a lot of moderately expensive wine over the past few years, I'm sometimes surprised when I go back to a $5 bottle that I like. Usually if I think about it harder, I find that I'm enjoying a combination of sweetness and oak that are pleasant, but not really that fun to dwell on. It's similar to that balance of salt, sugar, and fat that snack foods use to be broadly liked but not have much depth.
Not to say that such wines are bad, but I think you're missing the point to say that expensive wines are supposed to be appreciated by the masses.
Re: How to get the wine you really want
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who said anything about having to use drugs to acquire a taste?
Are there any acquired tastes that don't require some form of drug usage (alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, etc.)?
Ummmm... Plenty. Wikipedia has many examples
>An acquired taste often refers to an appreciation for a food or beverage that is unlikely to be enjoyed by a person who has not had substantial exposure to it, usually because of some unfamiliar aspect of the food or beverage, including a strong or strange odor (e.g. stinky tofu, Gefilte fish, durian, hákarl, black salt, nattō, stinking toe, asafoetida, surströmming, or certain types of cheese), taste (such as alcoholic beverages, vegemite/marmite, bitter teas, salty liquorice, malt bread, unsweetened chocolate or garnatálg), or appearance.
Re: How to get the wine you really want
#130Twenty years ago I was a tea-totaller, but there was a group of people I wanted to hang out with who would get together to drink wine so I decided to try to develop a taste for it. I eventually got to be a pretty hard-core wine snob. My wife and I even ran a wine-tasting group for several years. Then one day we decided to start doing blind tastings, and we soon learned that there was very little correlation between w…
> There were twelve of us in the group and every single one rated the Silver Oak dead last, and the Barefoot either first or second.
I've always been of the opinion that Barefoot punches above its price, so to speak.