Sep 02 2010
A Guide To Establishing Your Wine Palate
In order to develop a taste for wine, keep tasting — and write down as many specifics as you can when you find a wine you like. Red wine or white wine? What grape? Which wine region? And so on, so that over time you can see a profile of the particular qualities that please you.
Without trying to sound geeky or snooty, but it’s not very useful to try to describe the types of wines you like in such general terms as mild, nonsweet, dry, etc. Commonly, people may say they prefer dry wines, but what they might really mean is they like off-dry wines. And then, they may find a wine too sweet but it may technically be a dry wine. What is useful is isolating what winning characteristics you look for in wine to know what it is you truly enjoy.
You can start with red wine or white wine. When starting out, inexperienced wine drinkers will normally prefer either red or white. The next step is consider the food you like to eat. Sometimes, the challenge of food matching can be a considerable influence on whether you like wine or not. It doesn’t have to be complicated and experimenting is normal, but some times, things just don’t work. For example, if you only eat junk food and drinking sweet white wines, matching wine to food could be difficult.
And then there is the question of price? It can be challenging to find wines that are more than just drinkable if you’re only spending $8 a bottle or less. If you want to explore more rarefied flavors, try wines from small producers and expect them to be more expensive than wines that are mass-produced.
Often, people simply note down the name and year of any wine that they truly enjoy drinking. Even If you have only one wine that takes your fancy, this could be a starting point for any wine adviser, such as a bottle shop owner, sommelier or reviewer.
And lastly but also importantly, ensure you maintain a sense of adventure. Understand that there will be some disappointing wines you’ll come across regardless of how many you drink or your knowledge of wine. Focus on the wines you have liked, what it is about them that makes them a favourite and you’ll continue to pick good from bad wines.
