Great article. I share many of the tastes of the author (e.g. "Coffee was drinkable—in fact, positively delicious—only with milk and sugar" and "I couldn’t imagine why anyone would eat a radish unless paid") but I don't have an aversion to wine.
What I have an aversion to is people who want to talk endlessly about wine. Or people who pretend they'd actually bother with wine in the first place if it didn't give them a buzz. Or anyone who expects me to spend more than five bucks a bottle (ok I can go as high as ten if it's a restaurant).
Aside from the whole issue of genetic differences between people and their fungiform papillae, I think the one line that gets to the heart of why people get so obsessive about wine is "no other pursuit made him feel farther from the lower-middle-class neighborhoods of immigrant Brooklyn from which he had worked so hard to escape".
I had an interesting "blind" taste test. I had gone to a winery, sampled some of the wines and decided to buy the one I liked the most (it was about $100). I put it in the back cupboard thinking I'll save it for something special. Then on some random night me and the girlfriend are watching TV and she decides to get some wine. I'm thinking we'll drink one of the $10 bottles. Instead I start drinking and am like this is so good, which wine is this blah blah. Then I find out it's the super expensive one. Even if there wasn't any alcohol in that, I would've still enjoyed it.
If you don't know anything about wine, the safest thing is to just go with what you like. And this means first and foremost ignoring price and prestige even if you'll be called a philistine.
One thing about wine I really enjoy is that there are so many different tastes available, and that tastes may vary by year.
If you're still exploring your preferences, I'd recommend to stay below 30€/bottle (reseller price, not restaurant) and try a lot of different ones (not necessarily on the same evening thought).
It's funny to lump these together. Having lived in a couple of wine-producing countries now, I've found the wine culture is heavily centered around finding the best price for the best wine. Finding a half-way decent low-priced wine is considered just as much a skill as knowing which high-priced wines are actually worth the cost.
> If you don't know anything about wine, the safest thing is to just go with what you like.
Even if you do know about wine this is what you should be doing. Drinking expensive wine because it's expensive is the wrong thing to do. The people who I know who really know wine are always in search of good wine that is also inexpensive.
Maybe you are talking to others, not me, but I'm not "still exploring my preferences" regarding wine. I honestly don't care...there are probably 10,000 things that I would rather spend my time exploring compared to wine. I enjoy wine 99% for the buzz, and if want something that genuinely pleases me as it goes down the hatch, and I'm not trying to impress anyone with my sophisticated tastes, my first choice would have to be a combination of whole milk and Nesquik powder.
it depends on what foods you are eating. wine goes really well with certain foods eaten in a certain order. if you could care less about maximizing the experience, thats fine, but drinking and enjoying wine is not about some 'pretending to be wealthy' feeling.
I think you underestimate the role culture plays in preferences. I don't doubt you can "maximize the experience", but you can do that with lots of things, for a lot less money. I could obsess over the exact balance and handle shape of the mug I drink my morning coffee out of if I wanted, to give the maximum pleasurable feeling on my hand as I lift the cup to my lips.
I think you are underestimating the role preference plays in preferences. We get it that you like wine mostly for the buzz, but it so happens that when people like it mainly for other aspects, they are not always faking it, and neither are they always posturing. When my wife and I enjoy a glass of wine at home, no-one else knows.
I think you are misunderstanding what I am getting at. It's like music... some genres of music are pretty unlikely that an individual would like except for the culture that surrounds them and promotes them. And yet, sure, those people that do like them, after being exposed to that culture, still probably listen to that music when no one is watching. I'm not suggesting that most people are consciously trying to impress people.
its not just about money, although more expensive things tend to actually be better.
my favorite wine comes affordably in a box. there are better box wines than others, and not all wines are appropriate for specific settings.
I can only get buzzed so often and only to a certain amount (I'm over 30), so when I choose to drink I try to get the most out of it. Since money is not a bottleneck in how often I can get buzzed, I think less about it in that context.
> wine goes really well with certain foods eaten in a certain order.
> drinking and enjoying wine is not about some 'pretending to be wealthy' feeling.
I'm pretty sure that these two statements are contradictory. Wine tastes good, and it tastes good with other things, but in no way more special than say, other fruit juices or beverages.
Do you maximize the experience of a fine meal with a flight of six different orange juices? No, nobody ever does that. And yet there is certainly as much variation in citrus juice as there is in grape.
Wine is treated differently precisely for the kind of reasons that you have to explicitly disclaim "pretending to be wealthy" as a motivation.
> Wine tastes good, and it tastes good with other things, but in no way more special than say, other fruit juices or beverages.
No, wine is a bit special here. It's somehow similar to cheese - there is a whole universe of tastes and subtastes based on many factors. You can of course ignore it completely and treat these foods like eggs (or put any other uniformly tasting kind of food here). That's perfectly fine. Or you can discover that there are so many flavors of cheese, with some of them particularly appealing to you - and just let yourself enjoy these.
Of course there are snobs who make a show out of everything, but don't let that spoil the genuine joy of tasting some good wine (or any other food that may or may not be expensive at that moment).
There are a couple hundred varieties of orange, and if you extend it to citrus more generally, there are thousands of varieties.
Compare that to the varieties of grapes - there are certainly more strains of grapes in total (5k-10k), but if you restrict yourself to only wine grapes, they are of similar complexity, and the entire grape industry is based on Vitis Vinifera and Vitis Labrusca, whereas Citrus has at least 4 original species.
And Citrus reacts just as well as Vitis Vinifera to terroir, as well - Citrus grown in volcanic soil vs limestone soil vs california loam has a distinctly different composition and flavor.
You're going to have to face it, wine is special because humans have declared it special, not because it's not similar in complexity to dozens of other agricultural, natural, and fermented products :)
If you go to a really fancy restaurant and buy their tasting menu they often have an alcohol free version instead of the wine package that often is a variation of juices and musts that is selected to pair well with the food.
> but in no way more special than say, other fruit juices or beverages.
> Do you maximize the experience of a fine meal with a flight of six different orange juices
A lot of people usually prefer to not have sweetness in their meal (at least where I live). Conversely I understand that people loving sweetness and not sour or bitter taste are perplexed by wine.
> And yet there is certainly as much variation in citrus juice as there is in grape.
You are underplaying the effect of fermentation, like from milk to a strong blue cheese. But yes other fermented juices could be as interesting, for example I heard Americans were quite into hard cider ("apple wine") in the past
It is as if wine had certain qualities that made it special. Don't blind yourself to something very good known for a very, very long time just because you don't want to be associated with a certain social group.
As someone who enjoys orange juice and thinks more than 95% of wine tastes awful, I agree but probably in the opposite direction that you intended with your statement.
I'm astounded by how many comments in this thread state as absolutes things that are obviously personal preference. I have never in my life felt a meal was better because of the addition of wine, but I find orange juice to be a compliment to a meal on a regular basis.
Ponzu sauce is made with a bitter citrus - much more 'lemon' than 'orange'. Secondly, of course, Ponzu sauce isn't a glass of orange juice. Comparing the two is ridiculous.
Not 6 different orange juices, but pure juice pairings have become popular on top restaurants (e.g. the 3-star Geranium here in CPH, and Noma while it was open), similar to wine pairings.
Those are thoughtfully developed mixes, so few if any just out of a bottle and typical pricing is half of a wine pairing (the wine pairing is normally the same as the tasting menu). I wouldn't personally swap a wine pairing for them -- if you think a full menu is too much, you can often get a half or share the wine menu between 2 people, even if the restaurant doesn't mention so. But it is an interesting alternative.
I think you're ignoring the additional complexity added by the fermentation. It's not fair to compare juice to a fermented juice. As I understand it, it is objectively more special than other fruit juices.
> Wine tastes good, and it tastes good with other things, but in no way more special than say, other fruit juices or beverages.
Well, other than the fact that, on top of its own particular taste characteristics, it's also a vehicle for a substance with is both a recreational drug and flavor enhancer, which certainly has an effect on experience when it is consumed that has nothing to do with social pretense.
Why do you seem so aggressive about this? Don't drink wine if you don't like it. Nobody cares what you do. Lots of people do like wine. What difference does it make to you?
I've tried cheap wines and a few stupidly expensive wines and I really disliked each one. It's just not a pleasant taste to me.
Same with champagne. Even expensive champagne is unpleasant.
The concept of wine or alcohol in general going well with certain foods is alien to me too. If I am eating and drinking alcohol at the same time, that warm fuzzy feeling in the head that you get from the alcohol makes my meal much less appealing to me, like it kills my appetite.
Alcohol and food is a case of one or the other to me. Never at the same time.
I enjoy wine, but I understand where you're coming from.
It turns out that neuroscience has some intriguing things to say about the general concept of 'acquired taste'. For instance, the first time people heard Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring', they rioted. This Radiolab episode [1] discusses an interesting hypothesis that might explain the events of that night, and I strongly suspect the same factors are the reason for similar reactions to many different kinds of stimuli, possibly including your experience with wine.
I generally agree with you. I've never been able to stand dry wine.
But there are some sweet wines that are utterly fantastic. I was at place a few weeks ago (Umbra Wines in Grapevine, TX) where I had a moscato d'asti that tasted like I was drinking liquid pixy stix. Ever since then, I keep thinking about going back so I could get a full glass instead of the mini-glass in the flight I had (it was the only wine in the flight I liked... the other two were dry, and I had to force them down, but the cost of the flight was worth it for the liquid pixy stix). Well, that and the mead they had there. The mead was also fantastically sweet.
To illustrate how much human tastes can vary: I don't like sweet drinks (coca cola makes me gag for example), and the idea of liquid pixy stix sounds like torture. (Though I'm now curious as to whether pixy stix would dissolve in water or alcohol, thus eliminating the need for the wine!)
Not me. Put anything sour in the food and I won't eat it unless it's balanced with a lot of sugar. For salad I use just oil and salt - never vinegar or lemon juice, because they taste terrible.
Do you like beer or coffee? Those two are also pretty harsh and not sweet.
The reason why I like red wine is because I can select ones that are not sweet and I really enjoy non sweet drinks with food. Water is nice and what I usually drink but it is pretty neutral and does not add to the meal the same way wine can do.
However I'm not a fan of alcohol so I have been starting to drink non-alcoholic beers (I like lagers and I think those are fine as non-alcohol) but I have not found a good non-alcoholic red wine yet. I would love to though so if anyone has any recommendations please tell.
> Do you like beer or coffee? Those two are also pretty harsh and not sweet.
As someone who also can't stand dry wines but loves sweet wines, it depends on the beer. My favorite beers are sweet thick malty beers like doppelbock, milk stouts, wee heavy, etc.
There's a semi-local brewery here called 903 that has a Milk & Honey Stout and a Chocolate Milk Stout. Drinking those is like drinking a little bit of heaven.
I do not like coffee, but I'll drink it with sugar if I need the stimulation (although normally I'll just swallow a spoonful of dried instant coffee instead to get it down quick). I'm neutral toward beer, don't really like it, but don't hate it either.
I have a very similar experience with wines. I did find one kind of wine that I genuinely enjoy, though, and that's icewine. I think it's because of how much stronger it tastes like, well, grapes rather than alcohol. And also very sweet.
But because of that latter part, it's really more like a liquid dessert.
Well, there is a lot of evidence that your perception of the quality of a wine actually effects how you taste it. If you can somehow convince yourself that a $3 bottle is actually $30 bottle (or more), you'll actually like it better!
It's just not true at the very low price points. I can drink 3 buck chuck anytime but I will know it is 3 buck chuck. Why? It's much harsher and lacks any depth in flavor.
Now give me a good wine in the $15-20 range and it can be incredibly satisfying. There are also plenty of bad expensive wines. But as you dip below the $10 mark I have yet to find a wine that isn't much harsher and harder to drink.
3 buck chuck is not the same wine each time. It is whatever is surplus and they can get for a low price (and meets whatever their quality standards are), and sometimes it is the exact same wine that goes for $40 or more. They sell it off for cheap to reduce supply to maximize profits. I know a "wine snob" from Napa -- he actually was paid well to write about wine -- and he explained in detail, and mentioned that there were lots of "in the know" wine lovers who would go to Trader Joe's, buy a bottle, take it to their car and taste it to decide if they wanted to go back in and grab 20 bottles.
I am super pissed in a not actually pissed at all sorts of way that my local liquor stores seem to be stocking entirely 100% tempranillo. I don't know if Spain just gave into the American obsession with varietals or what but personally I love a 70-90 trempranillo but it's very much a grape that benefits from a blend.
Also, a wine rating app like vivino is a good way to explore wines while (hopefully) avoiding the ones that are utter shit. Just pick whatever's cheap and rated 3.8 or higher, and you'll usually find something decent.
>One thing about wine I really enjoy is that there are so many different tastes available, and that tastes may vary by year.
Are there? You may be missing that not everyone even notices this enormous variation in taste[1]. For my part, all wines taste like sting-y grape juice, and most beers taste like empty sting. This persists after numerous wine/beer connoisseurs have insisted that I just need to try one more of this special brand, or insisted that each wine in a particular flight has a very different taste.
For that matter, perhaps you're just imagining the flavor variation and have tuned yourself to give the socially-correct answer?
Furthermore, there may be an unrecognized disagreement in the basic ontology of "liking" something. I know people who will swear up and down that they "like alcohol", but it turns out they only like it when it's heavily diluted with other, universally enjoyable flavors (e.g. sugar). In my book, that's not what liking something looks like.
See also this reddit thread, with numerous posters agreeing that all alcohols taste gross to them:
[1] Important reading: "What universal human experiences are you missing out on without realizing it?" Punchline: people casually assume that all humans experience X, ground major beliefs on X, and turn out to be mistaken. http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-ex...
> Or anyone who expects me to spend more than five bucks a bottle (ok I can go as high as ten if it's a restaurant).
Apart from the fact than nobody should expect you to spend any money on anything... Just like everything else, wines differ, among others, in quality. If you spend 5 bucks on a bottle, chances are what you're drinking is really bad. It is possible to find decent wine in this range, but it's quite difficult.
Spirit awards are a very fishy business. They tend to charge high entry fees and give out lots of participation trophies. Something that sounds prestigious like a "double silver" probably means that it didn't taste quite as bad as rancid cat pee.
Perhaps. There's also just difference tastes, some people prefer different types of wines (e.g. a blend containing more merlot, etc).
That said, I can tell for a fact price often does not matter past a certain point -- it definitely isn't a good way to determine quality. I have had great bottles that sell for $15, and (not horrible but) not special ones that sell for $50 or $100. There are plenty of good $15 wines and plenty of bad ones. Same applies to the higher priced ones as well.
Often it's hit and miss, and you need to do your research! (Which isn't necessarily a bad thing)
I have found some pretty good wine from Australia that is only about seven dollars a bottle. Merlots and Cab Sav are my favorites. I got a bottle of Merlot from Portugal for so little I thought it would have tasted terrible but in fact, it was great. Now, I am not a wine professional by any stretch of the imagination but I think you can find some great wine for ten dollars or less.
Just don't buy a bottle based on how the bottle looks.
When you cook with wine you lose all the alcohol, which is the only constant between two bottles of wine. You're just left with the rest from which comes the taste.
There's no such thing as "cooking wine". Bad wine is bad wine. If you wouldn't drink it, don't cook with it.
That all being said, I personally think wine snobbery is basically bullshit and I think blind taste tests tend to support that view.
Still, a wine isn't bad because it's $5. Nor is it good because it's $30.
When I lived in the UK I'd often get by with the table wine from Tesco for under 5 pounds and honestly it was fine. I found quite a few decent bottles of Portugese and Chilean wine for under 10 pounds. Beaujolais wasn't more than 3-5 pounds.
> When you cook with wine you lose all the alcohol, which is the only constant between two bottles of wine. You're just left with the rest from which comes the taste.
This is a myth. Even after 2.5 hours of simmering/baking, 5% remains. Flambeing leaves 75%, and a 15 minute simmer still leaves nearly half.
You can almost always substitute 3/4 cup white vermouth (e.g. Martini) for 1 cup white wine. Generally tastes just as good, and you don't have to drink the remainder of the bottle.
>and you don't have to drink the remainder of the bottle.
You say that like its a bad thing.
Cooking with the wine is a great way for it to end up on the table surrounded by random glasses where "I don't want to trouble you", becomes "well, since its open anyway".
Pretty sure nothing that creepy was intended. More like wine is often thought of a "special occasion" type of drink (especially in the US), and so opening a bottle is a non-standard occurrence at dinner time. If you're a guest, it may seem rude to ask somebody to open their "special" wine.
But if you are cooking with the wine, you already have the bottle open. Since an opened bottle of wine will rapidly deteriorate if you don't drink it within a fairly short time period (day or so), you may as well drink the remainder, thus put the open bottle on the table (where family/guests are gathered), and it will be consumed with relish.
Stuff like red wine sauces, whiskey glazed veggies, rum cakes, flambeed mushrooms, etc. that aren't cooked as long contain a very significant amount of alcohol.
Maybe you just live in the wrong region. Over here, you can get a decent wine for 5 EUR, if you know where to buy. That said a wine for 30 EUR from the same wine maker most likely is a lot better. One thing I've learned is to buy from good local wine makers (I admit that's not possible everywhere though :-) and to forget about wine stores, international prizes etc.
I wholeheartedly agree. If you live in Tuscany, you can buy wonderful vino sfuso from 2014/2015 at €2/liter in a small local shop. But there is no chance you could taste anything similar at the same price in the USA.
Not really, you can find plenty of decent Italian and Portuguese wines for that price. To take the first example I found, the 2014 Quinta de Cabriz is 46th in the world top 100 of the Wine Spectator and costs $5 in Portugal, and less than $7 in the US.
The last wine I drank was a Montepulciano d'Abruzzo; I can't remember the specific winemaker, but it was quite nice and was less than $9, despite being bought in another European country.
I'm still in shock about wine prices in the US but SF in particular. ~18 months after I moved here. In Germany I could buy the same Californian wines for cheaper than here, not to speak of pretty good French, Italian, Spanish ones. It's less bad if you're outside of SF.
>>What I have an aversion to is people who want to talk endlessly about wine
Do these people actually exist or have you just heard about them on TV and over-match any time you hear some one talk about wine for more than 30 seconds?
I have certainly been to parties where we are standing around drinking wine, and my eyes glaze over as people talk about wine for a lot longer than I'd like. And they talk about going to tasting events and whatnot where they can presumably talk at even more length about it.
I went to a wedding celebration for friends that eloped recently. It was put on by a wealthy friend of theirs, who happened to be a bit of a wine fanatic. He had hundreds of bottles worth hundreds of dollars each, and basically said "enjoy whatever you want" to the guests.
Most of us were drinking what was already opened, or even the beer in the cooler.. but one guy... one guy, had to talk about every bottle. Go through a glorious ceremony for each. Find the perfect glasses, and people to talk to about it. It got pretty annoying, to the point the wine loving host himself was like, great to meet you, but why don't you and I get together some other time, let's focus on (couple's name) instead.
There you have two kinds of wine fans, one I like, one I couldn't stand being around. My mother is a third kind, the one obsessed with finding the highest quality to cost ratio she can. I'm not sure how I feel about her :)
The length and detail annoys me. I tolerate it, I just don't enjoy it. It comes off as pretentious. And it just falls into the "why is this so important to you?" territory.
Thing is, even if you completely ignore wine flavor there is so much to talk about. One, wine is often grown in picturesque areas that make great travel destinations. Wine has it's own battles like oak vs. no oak which brings people to same level of arguing as vi vs. emacs debate. If you're at all a history buff, wine intersects all throughout. Then there are generally cool, geeky things about wine. For example, how the wine in Santorini is cultivated is fascinating: http://www.winesfromsantorini.com/the-vineyard.html
I don't find any of this pretentious, and more general interesting conversation.
Again though how much length is it really and how much length is it you mentally adding because it is for some reason important to you that it shouldn't be important to them. And by 'important to them' I mean: 'discussing the activity while, and only while, they are currently doing it'
Well I don't consider parties to be all about what is being consumed. Sure, it is while they are doing it, but typically a party is a generalized social occasion, not an activity based get together like a book club.
I'd say it's not so much about how often people talk about wine, but how they approach wine in general.
For example, there's a group of wine selections that I've found to be pretty tasty (and often pretty affordable, with many in the $15-$25 range). I went into a busy wine store in an affluent neighborhood and asked the people in the wine department if they had any wines of that select, and they looked at me as if I was from the moon. They told me that's not the way wine is organized - they wanted me to give them a price point and tell them if it's red or white. That's how a lot of people approach wine: "I want to spend N dollars on a X color wine."
(I went to a smaller wine shop near a college, and they knew just who I was talking about)
People have said it's like talking about Vim vs Emacs, and it is somewhat, but it's like hearing people who have never used Vim or Emacs talk about Vim vs Emacs. Have you ever come across those conversations? Everyone is just repeating things they read and saying what they believe the common consensus is, and no one is thinking for themselves.
Sure they do. I used to work in the wine industry. It's full of people who love to talk about wine. Most of it is complete and utter bullshit, and don't get me started on reviews (Has anyone done NLP work on wine reviews? I suspect they're mostly indistinguishable from each other).
It’s perfectly normal to have an aversion to people who want to talk endlessly about anything. Wine isn’t special. I have had similar issues with Android handset aficionados.
On a similar note, I have an aversion to people who tell me that I'm drinking wine wrong because I prefer sweet wine.
I will gladly wolf down moscato, red moscato, moscato d'asti, kosher concord wine, gewürztraminer, port, etc., and I'm just not a fan of any wine that isn't sweet.
I had someone tell me to my face once that "the good wines aren't sweet". I honestly don't care. I like what I like, and if someone tries to tell me that I'm wrong for liking what I like, my opinion of them goes down.
I used to be the same way. If you have the stomach for it though, I urge you to pick up a $10 Malbec or carmenere. The flavor is much more distinct (and spicy).
I find they go great with even heavy, spicy meals.
It honestly sounds like the author is desensitized to sweetness and dislikes bitter things in general. It's amazing how cutting out sugar/added sweeteners in general can greatly increase ones sense of taste. A little sweet can go a very long way. After a few months without sugar, eating a typical U.S. sweet treat feels like complete overload.
I've noticed this in a lot of my friends also. The ones that have attempted cut out sugar have all experienced the same.
Of course she could just dislike wine, which is completely fine. But all of the other things mentioned lead me to believe this might be a part of it.
After two months of living(in Italy) off spaghetti with tomato sauce and parmesan cheese I noticed, that ketchup started to taste for me a lot more like some kind of weird, sweet(too sweet even) BBQ sauce than, well, ketchup.
I'd imagine you also noticed how sweet most tomato sauce is in the US! I don't make pizza much at home, but for pasta sauce I always make my own. I can't stand the store bought sauce.
You could try Paul Newman's pasta sauce. They're not too sweet, and the profits go to charity. (I'm not aware of the full detail, but the company has been around a long time so I give them the benefit of the doubt).
That's orthogonal. Genetics decide what sensors you have, and exposure can lead to slow-moving calibration of them.
I've experience the effects of cutting sugar/salt as well. But no amount of additional exposure i tried has made me capable of handling alcohol or chili well. The desensitization would need to cover a gap that's far too large.
This is definitely a thing, but it's independent. I went off sugar for about two months. Apples tasted like candy. Celery and carrots were noticeably sweet (and delicious). Bell peppers tasted better. But bitter greens, especially kale, still tasted awful.
When I was a kid I used to play with "Creepy Crawlers" which was a form of liquid PVC that you'd put on a mini hot plate, pour into a mold, and as it cured it would give off a smell that I always remembered. So as an adult I find that certain wines give off that same smell. I've tried to explain this to people who know wine but so far no one has had that "aha!" moment, I assume it's some type of long-chain polymer formed by the phenols in the grape skins.
I had a bottle of red wine a few months ago that smelt very distinctively like 1980s Star Wars toys! (Perhaps there were other toys of the era that smelled the same, but after some initial difficulty in placing this slightly unwelcome, somewhat solvent-like smell, it was Star Wars figures that came to my mind.)
And the smell appeared to be in addition to all the other smells and tastes you might expect from red wine: so it tasted like a red wine, and smelled like a red wine, and it was actually quite nice... and it smelled of Star Wars figures as well, on top. That bit wasn't so nice, but it was so unusual that I could somehow separate it in my mind. Like I was drinking wine with a Star Ways toy under my nose, or something like that. It was a very strange experience.
Anyway, perhaps this is the same chemical, or one related.
After a couple of glasses the smell mostly dissipated.
I can only describe it as "chemical-ey". I think there are several "notes" in red wine that fall into that group (red wine is different from white, because the skins stay on longer in the process).
In my case my dad was into wood-working so my childhood memories include all sorts of solvents and other chemicals that had complex aromatics. So when I pick up a memory when I'm drinking wine, I know there's "something" going on at the molecular level, I just don't know what it is.
I don't think anyone knows in some cases, I mean the wine industry employs chemists, obviously, but no one can really put their finger on how wine develops and changes over time. That's why it's more of a craft than a science.
Wine is just the McGuffin here - the article is really about bourgeois insecurity, resolved by the author's redemption through discovering that she is actually more discriminating than the people whose approval she so desperately seeks.
I am unsurprised that differences in the palate are influenced by genetics. I'm one of those people where smell is very poignant for me and I notice small differences, and yet when tasting wines it was a fairly narrow group of wines that I liked versus ones I could really care less about.
A friend of mine told me about their personal experience which was that they felt that most wine tasted the same (with broad confines like all reds and all whites) but that after they gave up sugar, wine became a completely different beverage. They related that after two months without sugar in their diet not only did potatoes taste as sweet as candy had before they gave up sugar, wine opened up in astonishing ways.
It's on my list to replicate this experiment to see if an abundance of sugar in the diet masks many interesting flavors in wine.
This is a somewhat surprising change as I went through a drastic diet change about 10 years ago as a result of depression and a bout of anorexia; my diet became almost exclusively vegetarian with almost no sweets (mostly tea with an occasional splash of milk for drinks), and I had a similar result. Before I wouldn't touch alcohol, and cakes from Cheesecake factory couldn't be sweet enough for my taste.
Now such sweets are overpowering to me and the though of the taste alone is a bit revolting to my mind. (nevermind the calorie count of one slice of that carrot cake). But wines suddenly had some depth to them, and I could finally notice the difference between an okayish bottle of wine and what they used to water down for us at communion when I was a kid. Vegetables also just suddenly had a whole depth of flavor tied just to the vegetable itself, and Frozen or underripened vegetables stood out as very poor tasting to me.
Sigh. Being a supertaster isn't a scientific explanation for not liking wine. It just means if you don't like wine you are more likely to dislike it a lot.
By the definition, I am a supertaster. I know this because I once had a virus that made the papillae on my tongue swell and I couldn't eat anything for a week. My doctors all exclaimed how many "taste buds" I had and I must taste foods very strongly. I do - I rarely need seasonings - even salt and pepper - or heavy sauces. I eat pretty simple and enjoy (or despise) flavors.
But I love wine and many other strong/sour/acidic/fermented foods. Love dark chocolate. Lemons. Bitter green teas. I suppose I would love these as a medium or light taster too.
On the other hand, I hate coffee, sauerkraut, blue cheese and some other strong foods. I suppose I would hate these as a medium or light taster too. Just maybe not as fervently.
Hm, I think the article got that wrong -- Wikipedia seems to suggest that it's a lesser indicator [1]. If you don't have access to that PROP chemical they mentioned, an easier test is tonic water. Does it taste extremely bitter to you? For me (someone who has a lot of the features of a supertaster), tonic water is a nightmare.
If anything, your experience seems opposite of what supertasters experience, which is that certain chemicals overpower and blot out the normal flavor that others experience, especially with alcohol.
[1] "The cause of this heightened [taste] response is unknown, although it is thought to be related to the presence of the TAS2R38 gene, the ability to taste PROP and PTC, and, at least in part, due to an increased number of fungiform papillae." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supertaster#Cause
Is it possible that not all supertasters are alike? But that being a supertaster is still relevant to differentiation between people's preferences for wine?
I'm sure there are variations. But the idea of a supertaster is that tastes are more pronounced. So strong/acidic foods can be off-putting. But it's still not the "cause" for not liking a food, more of a degree.
Somewhat disappointed, since I don't like wine either and I was hoping this could help explain why, but my tastes seem to be diametrically opposed to the author's. I even like strong alcohol of other sorts- I've recently grown to like whiskey, since >10% beer is hard to find in my area.
The frustrating thing is that there is a very definite aspect of wine that makes me dislike it, but as far as I've been able to determine that same taste doesn't appear anywhere else, so I've never been able to describe to anyone what that is.
The science here makes me wonder, though, if someday someone will popularize a quantitative framework for people's differing tastes. Imagine an app where you take a picture of your tongue and it categorizing your taste-sensitivity on however many fronts, and recommends a restaurant. Or via a genetic test- 23andme could pay for some of its customers to take Dr Marks' taste-test-battery, and work out the correlations. People love to be categorized, and here's a way to do it that's directly impactful on their everyday lives (and in particular, on a social aspect of their lives.)
Indeed! Actually I'm quite surprised that with all the competition and snobbery going on at Michelin-star level restaurants, there's no restaurant that tunes their tasting menu to the guest's individual perception. Even a genetic test is probably feasible now, but at least a picture of the tongue and a questionnaire. I think there's a huge business opportunity here. "Crisp Paupiettes of Sea Bass in Barolo Sauce" sounds posh, but it could sound even more posh "finely tuned to the perception of those extremely sensitive to chestnut tannins".
I don't believe in this cilantro soap trope. Cilantro distinctly tastes like soap to me... and is delicious. I'm pretty sure it's just an odd taste that some people enjoy and some people don't. I used to hate it, now I love it, it tastes the same.
I mean... it's not just a trope, it's OR6A2[1]. But yes you're broadly correct that the overall taste is the same. Some people are just much more sensitive to particular compounds in it.
Here's another anecdote: when I was younger, cilantro was a nightmare for me. It tasted horrible and I could detect it in minute amounts, like to season a soup or curry.
Years later, I love the stuff. I don't know when my taste for it changed, but I find cilantro one of the most effective and interesting flavors for certain dishes.
The very definition of "taste" is fuzzy. Is it the way it actuates the receptors in your mouth, or is it the signals that ultimately come to your brain?
I feel like all the same snobbery and nonsense is common now regarding craft-beer and I have all the same feelings about it as the author does for wine...
I tend to roll my eyes and ignore such things, except for one frustratingly-common case: pretty much all stouts and porters (which are among the few beers I actually like) are described as tasting of coffee.
The problem is, I find coffee absolutely horrendous (I get my stereotypical-hacker caffeine fix from energy drinks), so it's often hard to tell whether actual coffee has been added during brewing process (which is quite common for stouts), resulting in a horrible drink with an accurate description; or whether it's a lazy 'tasting note' which is completely unrelated to the actual, potentially nice, flavour of the drink.
I know a person who grew to love stouts and porters, but then for medical reasons had to give up all caffeine. It's awfully hard to figure out which of those beers contain caffeine from coffee, and which just have coffee-like flavors. This person has mostly sworn off such beers in order to avoid the risk of drinking one with caffeine.
That not enjoying wine can be a profound experience that makes one search for meaning involving philosophers, politicians, multiple countries, mathematics, science, music, history, art, and social intrigue spanning dozens of people.
You might enjoy the New Yorker column, "Rabbit Holes". It's specifically for articles that take a small observation or part of culture and dive way deeper into it than you'd imagine possible (or practical).
I've always thought alcohol is a waste of good sugar :). I have very little bitter taste so it isn't that wine tastes particularly bad to me, just that grape juice tastes much better.
I do like cooking with lots of vinegar since it tastes sweet to me, but it seems like few people have similar taste (but I know of at least one relative who had a similar taste). What we eat regularly can also affect body odor and I'd guess this is a big part of why many people list smell as on of or the most important factors in attraction.
I've noticed that for me even mild dehydration makes my sense of taste briefly much more sensitive, to the point that there seem to be dozens of flavors in a glass of tap water that normally I wouldn't distinguish much of anything in. It only lasts about three sips and may be partially due to my chronic health issues that seem to sensitize me to many things, but it is interesting how strong of an effect it is.
"I started thinking about other foods I didn’t like. Capers. Kimchi. Cloves. Pepper. Kale. Coffee was drinkable—in fact, positively delicious—only with milk and sugar. Seltzer required enough discreet mouth-sloshing to subdue the effervescence. And I couldn’t imagine why anyone would eat a radish unless paid. It was more like a bee sting than a vegetable."
That's too bad! These spices and foods are all among my favorites. I'm curious what flavors the author enjoys most given her taste receptor situation.
"I dislike—in some cases, hate, hate, hate!—many fruits, and had not eaten a peach or a banana since I was a child, though I had smelled them, with displeasure ..."
This wasn't addressed in the article, but are bitterness receptors involved with tasting fruits? Although it seems more likely the 23andMe test doesn't identify taste variations that involve those flavors. Or maybe those dislikes are just unrelated to biology.
I've thought a lot about the subjectivity of taste, and I've come to the conclusion that it's one of those things like the Blue/Gold Dress Illusion that is perceived fundamentally differently by different people, and each group lives their lives in complete ignorance of the others. I'm also convinced that taste is a spectrum: a series of distributions which overlap between the different tasting groups.
When I met my now-fiancee, she was certainly what you would call a picky eater (not "only grilled cheese for dinner" picky, but in the general vicinity). As a self-styled "adventurous eater", I figured I'd try to get her to like more foods. It's worked, kind of. I think she's moved higher on her taste spectrum (towards more flavors) but still tastes things distinctly differently than me. She loves kale now, but most bitter greens and some veg are disgustingly bitter (as are tonic drinks). Puzzlingly to me, she's also become a cheese fanatic, devouring even the most aggressive raw-milk washed-rind cheese and hot blue cheeses that I personally find a bit much. And, to draw it back to the article, she's learned to enjoy wine. Whites are preferred over reds, but even then she has liked reds with softer tannins and bigger fruit tastes.
I also think a big part of the taste spectrum is that of texture. In my fiancee's experience many foods like steak or poached fish or soup in general may taste delicious, but the texture itself is off-putting enough to make the food unpalatable. Wine of course doesn't have this problem (except in a limited way of mouthfeel, body, tannin structure). All in all, taste seems to be immensely personal and complicated with a lot of different factors besides "brussels sprouts are too bitter".
It makes me wonder if there could be some analytical way to determine the salt/sugar/acid needed to add to a dish to make it taste comparatively similar between people from different parts of the tasting spectrum. Like color gamut calibration, but for food!
I have to admit the only wine that I ever thought was special was Petrus.
I'm also fairly sure that if they weren't labelled differently, I wouldn't be able to tell much difference between two red grapes or two whites. I'm a bit cynical about other's ability to do so as well, but politeness prevents me from expressing it. Sometimes it's good to have something to talk about, so you let the group's wine connoisseur go on about the provenance of whatever you're drinking.
> I wouldn't be able to tell much difference between two red grapes or two whites. . I'm a bit cynical about other's ability to do so as well
Are you also cynical about other's ability to tell apart Dr Pepper from Coca Cola? Or Black tea from coffee? Because they're a lot more similar than many wine variations.
I don't think I've come across anyone who's considered themselves a soft drink connoisseur before, so what is there to be cynical about? Plenty of people will tell you they're into wines, and they will give you accounts of the growing seasons in particular years and places.
Go along to a wine tasting if you want to see the difference. It's much easier to notice and appreciate flavours side by side than with different meals. I'm not a massive wine drinker, but I really enjoyed several tastings in NZ, and could clearly tell the difference between the wines.
Wow, I never knew why I hated the taste of wine, while everyone else were so eager to drink. To me, it tastes bitter, except for champagne. This article might mean that I might be super-taster, even though I had never considered it, since I cannot distinguish a lot of food.
Anyway, I just ordered PTC (PROP) strip from Amazon. It turns out it can be purchased for less than $10. I'm so curious to see where I stand, and if it turns out I am a super taster, I might need to change my diet.
Being a supertaster doesn't mean you end up being a picky eater. It's entirely possible to acclimate to foods and drinks that you originally detested. For me, I spent years forcing myself to drink beer before it barely became tolerable. I also force myself to eat brussel sprouts when they show up (such as christmas). I do the same for olives, pineapple, coffee, wine, etc. Nowadays when I order from subway, I always ask for "everything", it's great to get a mix of things that I don't really like with the things I do.
I'm 32 years old and I hate eating vegetables (with the exception of lettuce and celery, since they're practically tasteless). I've sheepishly described myself as a "kids menu eater", though I wonder if perhaps there's a biological excuse for my aversion. I also hate spicy foods... maybe I'm a supertaster? Then again, I like salty foods, so maybe not...
It's interesting to me that you find celery tasteless. I can't stand the flavor myself but I'll eat Brussels sprouts, broccoli and cauliflower all day long.
Not to mention wasabi, horseradish and other pungent foods.
This thread is blowing my mind... I thought celery was super inoffensive, essentially the watermelon of vegetables. (Now I'm curious what you think about watermelon!)
This sounds a lot like the supertasters I've known. Certainly not as sensitive to salt as other things- whether this is because saltiness works differently than other taste, or whether it's just impossible even for supertasters not to acclimate to it in the Western food environment, I don't know.
Interesting, I have disliked celery during my childhood, but I like it now :-) Though, I have always thought (and still think) celery has a peculiar and quite strong taste. Lettuce I can agree does not taste that much.
Interesting article, but it's not particularly notable that someone wouldn't like "big" wines (those with lots of alcohol and tannins). Those wines are better aged, and even when consumed, are better with something that can stand up to the strong flavours; well-charred, fatty steak is the classic pairing for these wines, and it is very good. In fact, this association could be why so many people like these wines.
While there are genetic components (and various other things that can be physically explained) to taste, that's true of a great many preferences, that is, those that we use the word "taste" to figuratively describe.
But their are also psychological elements to it, many of which are cultural. So you might like wine, or speed metal, or gangsta rap, or Tolkien, or caviar, or saunas, or any number of other things through a complex combination of genetics and the culture you've been exposed to.
If I like different music to you, I think very little of the difference is in the ears and almost all of it is in the mind.
One reason why I think this matters is that the brain is mutable, and it's very likely that I could learn to like a kind of music that I don't like at the moment. Maybe I could also learn to like a flavour that I dislike at the moment, but I probably couldn't learn to care much about a flavour that I can barely detect.
Of course "flavor" also includes things in the nose i.e. olifactory system, and I'd guess that most things that people talk about with wine are happening there. So yes, there are genetic differences that affect taste probably more than hearing, at least at the actual sensory organ.
But the other thing to remember is that the brain is physical too, and can be subject to genetic differences. It's just that we probably understand how the tongue affects taste more than we can understand how the brain affects other preferences (including flavor)....because the brain is so ridiculously complicated and interconnected.
I wonder what percentage of Michellin starred chefs are supertasters? I have to follow recipes to a T because I can't really taste if it needs more something, I just follow the recipe and if it doesn't taste good I look for another recipe. I guess this article explains why I enjoy spicy food a lot more than most people.
I don't think I'm a supertaster because I like wine, capers, black coffee, and, in fact, most "strong" things. But I don't like coriander/cilantro. I'm one of those people for whom it tastes like soap. I had also heard of a thing called a "highly sensitive person" and I would rather attribute my dislike of coriander to that. I just notice that, in general, I am far more sensitive than many people. I hear things, see things, and taste things that others don't. And, like the author of this article, I don't say it to brag because it's actually very often a liability. I can be irritated by something which nobody else will notice.
There was a bit of tongue-in-cheek tone to the article, as common in the New Yorker. I wouldn't read the first-rate brain bit as you did. It was a joke.
If you assume the New Yorker is joking every time they engage in smug class signaling, it does become much easier to stomach. But I'm not the person you're responding to and it really didn't sound like a joke to me either.
And yet I have to explain to every new person every time why I don't drink alcohol :( "It tastes bad" "But have you tried X cocktail/drink/whatever?" "No, but I don't need to, the alcohol tastes too bad to be masked".
Hell, I've returned desserts because they contained liqueur. I can't stand it.
Alcohol (including beer) is an acquired taste, but with no good reason to acquire the taste. It is exactly like smoking. If you have not forced yourself to like if when you were young and stupid^H^H^H^H^H^H^H impressionable, then there is no good reason to start later in life.
(The same can be said about coffee and tea, but those have arguably good reasons to acquire the taste; i.e. a cheap way to get caffeine.)
What do you find is the benefit of caffeine that couldn't be said of nicotine or alcohol?
Obviously they have different effects, but the people using each of those various drugs find the effect desirable.
Also, what's the point of starting caffeine later in life? AFAIK studies show that people who use no caffeine are generally more energetic/alert than those who use it regularly; it only works in the short-term.
I also think there have been studies that show both wine and coffee can be good for your health, so there's that, too.
I never drink coffee (hate the taste, similar to alcohol), and am plenty energetic throughout the day. I regularly go to sleep at 6am if I'm working on some side-project, and that's only because I don't want to wake up very very late the next day.
I said “arguably good reasons”, not “definitely good reasons”.
I think the current accepted truth about nicotine is that it doesn’t give anyone anything except nicotine addiction. Any perceived boost is simply making a nicotine addict not feel the cravings for a short while, i.e. just like a non-addict feels like all the time. Possibly, as you say, the same is true of caffeine, but as far as I know, this is not currently a generally accepted fact.
There was a good reason to acquire the taste when we knew how to brew beer/wine but not how to make water safe to drink or store for long trips, many, many years ago.
I get a headache when I drink alcohol but other people have described to me a pleasant feeling from drinking, for which I will just have to take their word for it.
I have experienced both cases, in varying quantities. Sometimes I have a headache very quickly (after a small amount of alcohol), and oftentimes I have a headache if I drink too much.
On the other hand, I often experience no obvious ill effects, particularly with limited consumption.
What I have an aversion to is people who want to talk endlessly about wine. Or people who pretend they'd actually bother with wine in the first place if it didn't give them a buzz. Or anyone who expects me to spend more than five bucks a bottle (ok I can go as high as ten if it's a restaurant).
Aside from the whole issue of genetic differences between people and their fungiform papillae, I think the one line that gets to the heart of why people get so obsessive about wine is "no other pursuit made him feel farther from the lower-middle-class neighborhoods of immigrant Brooklyn from which he had worked so hard to escape".