The Amateur Wino

What is a palate?  Well anatomically speaking the palate is the “partition between the oral and nasal cavities” (source: apraxia-kids.org)  Or in other words it’s the roof of your mouth.   In wine terminology, however, the palate usually refers to the taste, texture, and at times the aroma, of the wine.  The palate of a wine is usually comprised of the various ‘undertones’ or flavor characteristics, as well as the texture.  For example, some grapes have characteristics of berry flavors and/or chocolate and/or coffee.  Some are smooth while others are sharp, etc, etc.  Get the idea?  This is the wine’s palate.  When you hear someone say they have “a good palate” in reference to wine tasting, it usually means that they are able to easily detect these individual flavors and characteristics.

How does one train their palate?  Well essentially every time you taste a flavor, any flavor, say in your morning fruit bowl or the spices you add to your dinner, and commit that flavor to your memory, you are training your palate.   Being able to pick those individual flavors out of a wine is a whole other story.  What that takes is tasting of wine, lots and lots of tasting.  For most of us this will only come with time.  If you really want to get serious about developing your palate you can read the wine’s description on the label.  There you will usually find notes about the wines flavor characteristics, such as pear or blackberry etc.  Before leaving the store, pick up a few of those items and taste them along with your wine.  Take the time to smell them as well because the aroma is also a part of the wines palate. 

As for me, this amateur wino says, if the wine tastes good, drink up, but do take a quick moment on your first sip to really taste the wine and see if you can identify at least one flavor undertone.  If you can’t, no worries, practice makes perfect right?!

Now what about learning to love those hearty reds and their dry characteristics, or even the sweetness of some whites?  Well, developing a wine palate and training your taste buds are really two different things.  Remember when you were a kid and you refused to eat your veggies?  Or how about when you swore you’d never eat onions? or tomatoes?  That was me…. and now I eat both…. GASP!  I’m sure all of you have a similar story.  See as we get older, we typically try new things and thus expand our tastes.  The more we try these new flavors, the more accustomed our taste buds become to them and the more we will accept them as “good” flavors.  It’s the same way with wine.  So essentially the answer again is to taste, and taste again, and then taste again. 

The more you taste different wines, the more accustomed you will become of some of those characteristics that you couldn’t stomach in the beginning.  I remember the first time I had a sip of red wine, I couldn’t imagine anything in the world worse than that. DOUBLE GASP!  But… I was only 19 and had yet to discover the joy of those hearty flavors.  Of course there will always be some flavors that you will never be fond of, and should you find that to be the case with a particular variety of wine, don’t force it!  However, do try the same variety from a different region.  It could be that you aren’t fond of the grapes grown in France, but absolutely love the grapes grown in Australia, as is the case for me.  After that, if you still don’t like a particular variety… move on to something else.   Drinking something you just don’t like does absolutely nothing for your experience.  With so many varieties of grapes available today, you are bound to find one you will love! 

Until next time…. Happy tasting!!